After a thirty- year career as a high school art history teacher a woman, in the autumn of her life, is unceremoniously laid off, due to budget cuts. She and her husband of forty years, had planned to travel the world on a great adventure to see the greatest works of art. Unfortunately, he passed away last year. Stricken by excruciating, recurring headaches, her doctor gives her an MRI, which reveals an inoperable brain tumor. The doctor gives her six months to live and possibly one year, if she undergoes chemo.

She decides to skip chemo in favor of spending quality time with her two elusive adult children, who live very busy lives in different states. Although she doesn’t tell them about the tumor, she makes an impassioned plea for them to travel abroad with her to see her top ten favorite portraits. Citing the demands of taking care of their own families, they both turn her down.

In that profoundly sobering moment, she realizes that she is a wife with no husband to love and a mother with no children to raise. In a flash, all her thoughts are crystalized. Her life is her own and she must live what she has left on her own terms. Without a word to her children, she rids herself of all her possessions, sells the house she had lived in for forty years, and sets out on the adventure of a lifetime alone.