[Book Report] For One More Day - Mitch Albom

            For One More Day is a novel that is written by Mitch Albom. He is an American author, journalist,  screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster, and musician. This is the second novel that was published in 2006. It has been translated into 26 languages. This novel tells us about a family life, especially the relationship between a son and his mother.

            What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one? This is not a love story, but this is a story about family. Charley “Chick” Bennetto is a former baseball player. He had attempted to kill himself for many times, but The God saved his life. Charley Bennetto is a broken man, alcoholic, and his life is full of regret and destruction. He loses his jobs, his family was broken since he was a child. It forced him to decide which parent he most like to choose. He should decide which boy he wanted to be. Be a mamma’s boy or daddy’s boy. He picked his father, but later his father left his family and chick lived with his mother and his sister.  How difficult it was, to live in broken home family.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the trees.Like his parents, when he was being an adult, his own family alsodivorced. He was very disappointed as a father, because he wasn’t invited to his daughter’s wedding.

This book tells many experience of Chick Bennetto when he was a child.It also tells the simple stories about the time when he stood up for his mother and the time he didn’t stand up for his mother.

The most memorable story is, when his mother dressed him to be a mummy at the halloween carnival in the afternoon.  His mother used toilets paper to wrap chick’s body, because it was cheap.  Unfortunately,  it rained. The mummy was not a mummy again. The other parents were happy to take a photos  of their child, but not with Charley. He felt very shy, all of the people laughed at him. He said to his mother “you’ve ruined my life!”.

Charley felt desperate since his mother passed away. He was alone and no one support him on his side. He was playing baseball in a competition when his mother died because of heart attack. It was the reason why he always blamed himself.

Charley Bennetto died five years after his attempted suicide. The cause of Chick’s death was a sudden stroke at the age of fifty eight. A week before his stroke, he seemed to sense that time was short. He told people around him “Remember me for these days, not the old ones”. He was buried near his mother’s grave.

There is a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. Butm behind all of your stories, there is always you mother stories because hers is where yours begins.

Overall, this novel is great. The stories of Charley Bennetto remind me to my family, my parents, and especially my mother. The conversation and several incidents in this novel close to our reality in our daily life.