Is it harder to give up on life or love?
TERMINATED TEARS follows a retired oil rig worker whose life has collapsed after the brutal murder of his wife, Helen, a gifted psychotherapist. The inciting incident is not only her death, but his own reckless skydive-an impulsive, near-suicidal act that exposes the depth of his grief, guilt and emotional dislocation. Estranged from his daughter and harried by neighbours, a former lover and a counsellor, he sells the family home and chooses exile over stagnation, setting off for Spain in search of the indultado: the fighting bull pardoned after surviving the arena.
His journey becomes both escape and investigation. Carrying Helen's PhD and secretly obtained trial transcripts, he tries to understand why she died.
Along the way, encounters with his daughter, old friends, Spanish hosts, bull breeders and a mysterious tarot reader force him to confront masculinity, ageing, love, rage and the limits of forgiveness whilst breaking down his loneliness and the unfathomable answer to raw vulnerability.