For One More Day

For One More Day by Mitch Albom                  Audiobook:  3hours, 36 mins.         Paperback Book:  208 pages                                   

A nicely told tale that just might bring a few tears, especially to those of us reading or listening to it who’s mother has passed away.    Well told tale in that Twilight Zone tradition that takes you out of reality as we know it and delivers you to another place however briefly that you wish you could make last.   Not in the creepy Pet Sematery by Stephen King kind of way ala the Monkey’s Paw version of someone returning from the dead but in a virtual reality sort of way, dreamlike and surreal yet solid and comforting.    The story is short but no less sincere in its delivery.    A man at the end of his rope finds his dead mother’s returned and for all his screw-ups she surrounds him with love and non-judgmental understanding.   She becomes the ear to hear the sorrow in his soul and the shoulder he could always cry on from birth to manhood when things got beyond him.    Her sweet spirit is calm and soothing reminding him doing the right thing is never the wrong thing regardless the consequences.   Yet, he can’t stop telling her, “You know you’re dead, right?”   That awful ugly bit of truth that keeps nagging and won’t allow him to just bask in the moment and hug her and hold her with all his might.   She tells him he has always taken things far too seriously.   Is he high strung or did his mother know how much he needed her and visited him to give him back one more day – the day he lost with her the day she died and he wasn’t there.     I wish it had been a longer story going into more detail but in retrospect, it was just enough.    I would recommend this story especially to those who grieve for their lost parents but I think everyone could be moved by this grown manchild allowed to spend one more day with the person who loved him best and who he too, loved best.    It is a hand up when you are down and a lovely story.

 - Shirley J.