46 pages • 1 hour read
Mitch AlbomFor One More Day
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 29-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 29 Summary: "Chick Finishes His Story"
Chick tells about his earliest childhood memory, that of his mother lifting him up to drink from a water fountain. He is gradually returning to his body, in the field below the water tower, beginning to feel the extent of his injuries, and he feels his mother leaving him: “[...]the dark pulled away and there were stars. Thousands of them. She was laying me down in wet grass, returning my ruined soul to this world” (139). He asks her what the word that the Italian woman said meant, and she explains that it means “to forgive,” and that he should forgive himself. She tells him to live, and the stars he sees gradually become the bright lights of the police, who have found him after his suicide attempt.
Chapter 30 Summary: "One More Thought"
The last chapter of the book is narrated by Chick directly to the still-unnamed narrator. Chick explains he doesn’t need anyone to believe his story, only to know that he himself believes it. He sees the vision he experienced as his mother’s “echo.” He explains how lucky he feels for having been able to enter treatment for alcoholism and for not killing anyone when he crashed into the truck on the highway, as well as for surviving the entire ordeal. He says that he would “like to make things right again with those I love” (142).
Epilogue Summary
The book’s epilogue is told in the voice of the narrator, who explains that, five years after he attempted suicide, Chick died of a stroke, at the age of 58. His childhood friends and family, including his father, were at the funeral. The narrator checked the details of the story, and as far as she could tell, many of the events - the car accident, the people Chick and Posey visited - had all been real, and the details had conformed to Chick’s telling of them.
Chick had sold his mother’s house and given the money to his daughter. He had moved into an apartment and built a good relationship with his daughter and, to some extent, his ex-wife. He worked at the parks and recreation office running sports programs for children.
Finally, the narrator reveals that she is Maria, Chick’s daughter, and that she will soon have a son who she will name after him. She says that “even though Chick is gone now, his story flows through others. It flows through me. I don’t think he was crazy. I think he really did get one more day with his mother. And one day spent with someone you love can change everything” (144).
Chapter 29-Epilogue Analysis
The memory of the drinking fountain brings together a number of images and themes. The memory is intensely physical, as has been Chick’s mother’s presence, despite the deaths they’ve encountered throughout the day. She supports and nourishes him by picking him up to drink water after carrying him past a line of men who are hot and sweaty from playing sports. The symbolism of this detail is unmistakable - it shows how his mother’s love has offered him respite from the harsh, self-serving expectations of his father, who has shaped his expectations of himself as a man. The sensory quality of the memory parallels his return to his body where he is lying on the baseball field: “[my] head touched the earth. I felt moist blood trickling down my temples” (139). The theme of healing and forgiveness is fully developed as his mother translates the words of his father’s other wife, another woman whose presence in the story is closely connected with healing and forgiveness. As his mother fades away after laying him “down in wet grass, returning [his] ruined soul to the world,” the stars above his head grow “closer, round and white, like baseballs” (139-140).
In Chapter 30, when he speaks directly to the narrator, Chick has come to terms with both his past and his future. Though he is still convinced that his story is unbelievable, he is peaceful in the belief that it did happen, and it has inspired him to make amends with his loved ones. The epilogue reveals that the book is itself evidence of the fact that he has done just that. His daughter, the narrator, adds yet another layer to the story: she is telling the story of her father telling a story about his mother. In the five years after his accident, he was able to gain the forgiveness of his family and become a productive part of a supportive community. The “one more day” of the book’s title thus refers both to Chick’s day with his mother, and Maria’s reunion with her father.
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By Mitch Albom
