Book Review: Mitch Albom’s ‘for one more day’
‘Let me guess. You want to know why I tried to kill myself.’ This is the opening sentence of this novel by Mitch Albom. Intriguing.
‘Let me guess. You want to know why I tried to kill myself.’ This is the opening sentence of this novel by Mitch Albom. Intriguing.
It is a story of how Chuck, a broken man in many ways, lives through one more day with his deceased mother.
It explores Confessions, the pursuit of truth and clarity, seeking and receiving forgiveness. All these themes are wrapped around the mega-theme of mortality.
It seems to ask: if we could bargain with death, what would we ask for and what might we get?
I’ve taken a long time to read this book because the characters and their interactions have sometimes come too close home. It’s taken even longer to decide whether to write — even longer to decide whether to share — this review. Eventually deciding to do so, after a few recent conversations with friends about grief journey.
In a sense, this book has been another way of processing my grief. Imagining, as I went along, what one more day with my mother would look like. What would I cook for her? What stories would we tell? What things would we want to say to each other? What are the things that we still leave unresolved?
By imaging this one more day … I can speak into the silences that marked the last days of mum’s life after she suddenly lost her ability to speak.
The books speaks some truths that may often be difficult to fully grasp or articulate. For instance, on how the death of a mother also robs you of that word forever.
And what I get from the book is the importance of this imagination and conversation about those we’ve lost … because “Sharing stories of those we’ve lost is how we keep from really losing them.”
But also, the reality that it’s often after she’s died that you realise how little you knew about her life because you were too busy! In the book, the main character Chuck says, “I knew so little about my mother over the last decade of her life. I had been too wrapped up in my own drama. … So many times, I had chosen not to be with her. Too busy. Too tired. Don’t feel like dealing with it. You count the hours you could have spent with your mother. It’s a lifetime in itself.”
That cuts deep!