For One More Day by Mitch Albom is a book I finished last night; One of my co-workers lend it to me because she thinks I’m a ghost freak and would absolutely love it, but I also wonder if she lend it to me because of my mom. The book is bittersweet and heart warming to read, this is part of the book:
Now, when I say I saw my dead mother, I mean just that. I saw her. She was standing by the dugout, wearing a lavender jacket, holding her pocketbook. She didn’t say a word. She just looked at me.
I tried to lift myself in her direction then fell back, a bolt of pain shooting through my muscles. My brain wanted to shout her name, but there was no sound from my throat.
I lowered my head and put my palms together. I pushed hard again, and this time I lifted myself halfway off the ground. I looked up.
She was gone.
For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?
As a child, Charley “Chick” Benetto was told by his father, “You can be a mama’s boy or a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both.” So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence.
Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life.
He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother — who died eight years earlier — is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened.
This week has been the hardest for me, I’m sure for my dad and all my sisters as well, every future holidays and special events I’d imagine. Spring is the time of the year that my mom and I did many things together. About 2 weeks ago, as I was driving to work, I saw the Parade of Homes banner on the side of the road, for May 5, 6, 12 & 13; this was something that we did every year. I’d pick up my mom, dad, and sisters early in the morning, packed them in my small car, and we’d drive from one house to the next, all new construction homes which are available for free tour. I didn’t go to last weekend event, but haven’t decided if I’d go to this coming weekend, it’s one of the events that we look forward to going every year.
If I have one more day to spend with my mom, I’m not sure what I would do. I did what I thought I wanted to do, ask all I thought I wanted to know, she told all that she wanted us to know, such as whom to be on the look out for. Towards the end, she kept telling us about her mom’s funeral, such a hectic event, spoke about it as if it just happened yesterday, we all patiently listened because we knew this day will come, the day that she is no longer with us physically but only with us in our memory. For one more day, I think we’d just sit and talk…Mom, we all miss you and love you.
I like the ending of the book; my favorite part and so true: BECAUSE THERE WAS a ghost involved, you may call this a ghost story. But what family isn’t a ghost story? Sharing tales of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really loosing them.
“If you had the chance, just one chance, to go back and fix what you did wrong in life, would you take it? And if you did, would you be big enough to stand it?” By James McBride
Nye Noona 