"What causes an echo?" she once quizzed me.
The persistence of sound after the source has stopped.
"When can you hear an echo?"
When it's quiet and other sounds are absorbed.
When it's quiet, I can hear my mother's echo still.

Thursdays, typically my half-day of the week—providing a medical appointment doesn't force me to muck my schedule up...you know, like that date I have with the CT Scan machine penciled in on the first Monday in November. Today, I wanted to dive into Mitch Albom's latest offering—For One More Day. You see, I so dearly loved its predecessors Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I read them both in one sitting—and I'll grant you, they aren't exceptionally long pieces to read...but I couldn't have put them down to save my life. It's rare to find a piece of art that awakens something so deep and raw within you, so deep and raw that it begs for a salve that you cannot provide without knowing how the story finishes, how the ache goes away...and perhaps how it never will.

I meant to read a portion of the book last Saturday before Jeff and Kara's wedding. I arrived at the church early with Nick, who was one of the groomsmen. I figured I would have a few hours to watch the sand seep through an hourglass...but it was not to be and I found myself instead with the taller, fuzzier, more male members of the wedding party...drinking beer and playing euchre. How girlie am I?

So today was the day I dedicated to Mr. Albom, in a locale that called not for me to tidy up, to hit the gym, nor to scale mount dirty-clothes. At the heartrending conclusion, I was only too relieved to have read the story in a public place which was perhaps my rescue from an afternoon enshrined in a weepy wistfulness and longing for what can never be. It is a story of a man who lost his mother, a man who's made choices he's not proud of, a man who tries to kill himself—and then he sees her, his mother, again. He spends a day with her, he says the things he never got around to saying and learns the things he never got around to learning. I never wanted to be a suicidal, alcoholic, baseball-has-been so much in all my life—or at least not in the last few years. Oh what I wouldn't do for one more day.

I sipped on cappuccino and read...it was one of the best afternoons of my life, and I am filing it away with another reading afternoon that I treasure, one that Mom treasured and mentioned often. It was so simple, too...an early summer Saturday afternoon, we spread a blanket beneath one of the trees in the backyard...brought our beloved house cat out on a leash, and the sweetest, stupidest, most loyal dog ever, Blondie, rested next to our assembly. The four of us sprawled there under that tree, the gentle breeze stirring our hair, and my mother and I read...and we talked...and we read some more...and we enjoyed. Simple, but idyllic, and everything one hopes for life to be, all in this simple moment.



My mother gave me eternity in an hour.

The lessons we learn with life are nothing when compared to the lessons we learn with death, and it is perhaps only with loss that our eyes open to all that we have. I lost my husband two days shy of a year ago, and my spirit broke. Nursing me back to a smile, Mom blessed me with those more profound gifts during her life.

It's just a sound, really. A hum interrupted by open lips. But there are a zillion words on this planet, and not one of them comes out of your mouth the way that one does.

Mom.

Read. This. Book.