For one more day

Summary: For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that lasts a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one? As a child, Charley Benetto is told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or you can be a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, and worships him-right up to the day the man disappears. An eleven-year-old Charley must then turn to his mother, who bravely raises him or her own, despite Charley's embarrassment and yearnings for a complete family. Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. he leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering that his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life. He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother-who dies eight years earlier-is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened. What follows is the one "ordinary" day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together.