Alright, here's the deal. I'm really tired of posting about this book. I finished it before spring break but it's really hard to blog about. It's a quick read with lots of good morals, but I wouldn't recommend this book for an ETY book to blog on. The hard part is he jumps around so much, going from things that happened in the past, to the present, and then also the times he didn't stand up for his mom and the times she did. It probably doens't make any sense to the readers. So, I'm going to wrap up the last 40ish pages in one post, hopefully. I should probably get started....
For One More Day Mitch Albom Pages 149-197
Chick tells us about the last day he saw his mother. It was her 79th birthday and their whole family was gathered at her house to celebrate. Each year she joked that people better come because starting next year she was going to stop telling people it was her birthday, but she had said that since she was 29. As the party continued on, the phone rang and Chick answered it. It was his father. He thought that maybe he was calling because he remembered it was his mothers birthday, but he actually had good news. His father was talking with a man from the Pirates and he mentioned that they needed a replacement for the Old Timers game, Freddie Gonzalez had bailed out. He told Chick that they said they could get him on the roster. Chick insisted that he shouldn't because he only played six weeks in the majors, so technically he's not an "old timer," but his dad wouldn't listen. He would play the next day, which meant he needed to leave that moment and catch a flight. When he told his dad that it's Mom's birthday he said, "Not tomorrow, it ain't." With this he went upstairs and lied to everyone. He told them that he had just recieved a business call and was called off to meet with a client. He pretended to be upset they called on a the weekend and made him work on a Sunday, and as he got deeper and deeper in the lie, he got more defensive about it. In the end, he left yelling at everyone because they wanted him to get out of it.Once he got to the game, it was a huge embarrassment. Only a few people were in the stands and all the "Old Timers" played terribly. To make the day worse, he got a call from his wife, who was crying. She told him that his mother had a heart attack and his daughter was the one who found her. His last time seeing her was a lie, and his last words were those scolding her.
Next, the visit one final house. When she got to the house, the woman didn't greet her, Posey just got straight to work, in silence. Finally, Chick asked who she was. His mother answered, "She's your father's wife." She explained that they met during war. She told him that she believed his father got scared during the war, and he didn't know how long it would last, and she gave him security. But then when he found out the war was coming to an end, he wrote a letter to Posey proposing to her, and eventually they got married. She explained that he found her, or she found him again years later. And when he built his new store a few towns away, he bought a second house, where she lived. Posey wondered why they never got a hotel bill for when he had to stay at the other store, he said he paid with cash. But one day she drove to that town and found his car parked by a house. She looked into the window and saw him, eating dinner with a woman and a young boy. She drove home that night and waited for him in the driveway. When he got home finally after midnight, she got in his car and they fought for a long time. He admitted everything. She told Chick, "You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can't trade them in. You can't lie to them. You can't run two at once, subsitution back and forth," and with that she dismissed his father from the home and made him leave for good.
He asked her if she hated his other wife, but she asked why she should hate her, she didn't know either. Then Charley confessed everything to her, between his shaking and tears. He told her about his lies on the day she died and his downward spiral to this point, but she just told him, "Don't give up." She understood the Charles had to choose the day of her birthday between her and his father and she knows a child should never have to choose between parents.
The woman stood up and pushed two things closer on the table. Charley looked at what they were. One was a picture of a boy in a graduation cap, the other was his baseball card. For the first time that night she finally said something:
Perdonare. We find out later that's Italian for
forgive. He finally answered the question that she asked in a previous chapter. He told her she was a good mother. She smiled and told him to live. And suddenly, she started to fade away, and then she was gone.
"CHARLES BENETTO. CAN YOU HEAR ME? WE'RE GOING TO MOVE YOU NOW. ARE YOU WITH US, CHARLES." Suddenly this is what Chick was hearing around him. "WAIT. LOOK A THIS HANDS! CHARLES?" Then softly, "Charles...? Hey, there you go, fella. Come back to us... YO! GUYS!"
Charles survived all this, and he belived this encounter with his mother saved his life. He died five years after his attempted suicide of a stroke. In the Epilogue, they state that they checked the stories Chick told. There really was a Rose Templeton and there was a crash that destroyed a billboard. The final paragraph goes as this: "My married name is Maria Lang. But before that I was Maria Benetto. Chick Benetto was my father. And if my father said it, I believe it."
I think the end really made the book amazing. It was such a twist that the daughter "wrote" the story of his life. He totally changed through this experience which was neat. It makes me want to change how I treat people. You never know when it might be your last day with someone, and most likely you won't see them again like Chick did. So for now, you have to live your life without regrets.
Like I said earlier, I really enjoyed this book, but it was really hard to blog about. I would suggest reading it because it's a very quick read and it's very good.
Goodnight, everyone!
