For One More Day

Has anyone read this book by Mitch Albom? I was checking out his book tour schedule here, hoping I could snatch up an autographed copy, but I don't think I can wait that long. This book sounds absolutely wonderful.

Here's what it's about...

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.

Can you just imagine the implications?

I am sitting here crying about that one more day I could have had with someone - my mother.

Mitch tells us there is a ghost story within every family. There is always going to be someone who dies, and someone who you wish you had one more day with.

If I had one more day with my mother, I'd tell her that mushrooms definitely make a good spaghetti sauce, even if you have to pick them out of the sauce before you eat it. My mother made a humdinger of a spaghetti sauce, and it wasn't until about 30 years after she died, did I discover that awful truth.

If I had one more day with my mother, I'd ask her to tell me stories of my childhood that I would never recollect.

If I had one more day with my mother, I would tell her how awful I felt as a child when my aunt took us away from her to live with my grandmother 3,000 miles away. I would have told her I wanted to wake her up, but my aunt wouldn't let me. I would tell her how agonizing it was for me to be away from her, and that I never stopped hoping she would come to get me.

If I had one more day with my mother, I would tell her that I really felt it was a raw deal for her to die one month after I was married. She never got to see her granddaughter or grandson born, and they never got the privilege of knowing one of the kindest women you'd ever want to meet.

If I had one more day with my mother, I would have asked her what really happened between my father and her. Even though I knew she had to get married because I was soon on the way, I would have wanted to ask her what it felt like to find out you are pregnant at only seventeen years old. Was she upset? Did she ever wish it never happened? And why, to this day, even though my father knows of my existence, why he never wants to see me, the child he never laid eyes on?

If I had one more day with my mother, I'd ask her why it is I have this inner craving to go back to my home in California--the same one I was abruptly taken from. What is it that is calling me to return? I'd ask her if it has anything to do with her spirit inside of me, urging me to take this trip, and maybe is it to find out things I need to find out?

And, finally, as if I could ever run out of things to ask her, if I had one more day with her, I'd tell her to tell me she loved me once again, and to take her fingers and brush my hair behind my ear like she used to do to me as a child, and to let me know that these years I have spent growing up without her, having babies without her, trying to keep my life afloat without her, was what I should be doing and that I am on the right track.

Even though I can't have one more day with her to ask her these questions, maybe I can find it within myself to come to the conclusions. But, it wouldn't be the same. I could only guess, and guessing only makes you more confused.

I ask you, if you had one more day to be with someone who isn't here anymore, what would you say?