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.
Chapters 23-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary: "The Sunlight Fades"
Chick stops the storm of exploding glass by squeezing his eyes shut. He notices that the sun is setting, and he begins to feel physically as well as emotionally uneasy: “shards of glass poked in my skin and I tried to brush them free, but even that seemed to require great effort. I was weakening, withering. This day with my mother was losing its light” (109). He is anxious to find out if he will die, or if he is already dead and has passed on to another world.
Now that he knows that his mother can visit those who think about her, they visit a series of other people in quick succession. Many of them are his mother’s former admirers, and he asks her why she didn’t get married again. She brushes away the question, saying she had her children, grandchildren, and friends to keep her happy.
They return to the family home, and she feeds him supper while he asks her about her family history. He is increasingly desperate to keep her around, as he begins to feel that she is fading from his life with the day: “unlike the stunned sensation I’d felt earlier in this room, now I was agitated, unnerved, as if I knew something bad was coming” (111). To distract himself, he asks about her family with renewed interest: “[...]a big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way” (112). As the sun is setting, she tells him that they have one more person to visit.
Chapter 24 Summary: "The Day He Wanted Back"
The chapter begins: “I need to tell you now about the last time I saw my mother alive, and the thing that I did” (113). Its language is weighed down with the guilt Chick has felt in the ten years since his mother’s 79th birthday, the last time he saw her. In the middle of a lively party attended by many loving friends and family, he answers the phone. “If I had my life to do over again,” he observes, “I would have let it ring” (114).
It is his father, who tells him that he has found a place for him in an “Old Timers” baseball game with other retired players. The game is set for the next day. Chick understands that his father has not given up hope that he will succeed in baseball: “‘Something opens up. A coaching spot.A batting instructor.Something in the minors. You get a foot in the door--” (116). After inward deliberations, Chick buys a plane ticket and tells his family he has to deal with a work emergency. Conflicted and not knowing that his mother will soon die, he is brusque with her: “the more you defend a lie, the angrier you become” (118).
The chapter ends with a conversation from immediately after Chick quit baseball, when he is considering opening a sports bar with a friend. Though his wife is uncomfortable with the venture, his mother encourages him to try it if it is something he’s truly committed to: “‘Belief, hard work, love--you have those things, you can do anything’” (119). Despite his commitment, the bar closes two years later: “Apparently, you need more than those three things. At least in my world, if not in hers” (120).
Chapter 25 Summary: "The Game"
Chick flies to Pittsburgh for the game and checks into a hotel. In the locker room before the game, he finds himself with players who are much better known. He tentatively tries to connect with them, remembering his father’s urgings, but his sense of not belonging there, along with his relative lack of shared history with the other players, holds him back.
On the baseball field, he is intensely aware of his status as an unknown player. When the announcer introduces him, he hears “a sudden drop in volume, enthusiasm melting into politeness” (123). During the game, he notices the changes that have taken place in his own body and the other players’ bodies, as they have aged. He manages to hit one pitch, and for a second he is euphoric, before realizing that the hit was not the home run he had imagined. After the game, he goes outside to see his father. His father tells him to go back into the locker room and make connections, and brushes off his attempts to catch up. Unbeknownst to Chick, back in Pepperville Beach, his mother has just suffered a massive heart attack and is about to pass away.
Chapters 23-25 Analysis
In these chapters, the meaning of Chick’s mother’s presence is fully fleshed out, along with the full significance of the theme of memory. His mother has helped him heal from the pain of his past, and to understand how, by maintaining good relationships with his family and friends, he can be secure in the knowledge that he will be remembered. In Chapter 23, as they move through the memories of other people who knew his mother, Chick learns more about her life. Chick’s sense of unfamiliarity with his surroundings deepens as they explore the memories of other people who knew his mother. When Chick asks his mother why she did not remarry, the narration contains faint echoes of his adolescent discomfort upon realizing that his mother is considered attractive. His mother’s assurances that her family and friends were enough put to rest the fears of his teenage years, while strengthening the book’s message of the importance of family. Afterward, Chick’s request that his mother recount their family history synthesizes the theme of memory with the importance of family.
Chick is finally forced to confront perhaps his most painful memory: the last time he saw his mother alive, when he once again chose his father’s demands over her. The pain of this memory is compounded by the sense that he should have learned from his earlier experiences, when he chose baseball over finishing college. After all these years, he is still a little confused and regretful about his repeated attempts to build a fulfilling and successful career, and his struggles clash with the simple optimism of his mother’s outlook. This confusion intensifies his sense of betrayal - while his mother insists that hard work and passion are enough to succeed at any dream, he understands that pursuit of his dream has taken away many of the things he cares about the most.
Chick ends up in the Old Timers’ game because he is still clinging to the possibility of a career in baseball. The difference between his perceptions about how well he is playing during his actual performance illustrate how memory, if not confronted and worked through, can warp the present. His mother’s death at the end of the game is the ultimate sacrifice in the name of his career and his father.
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By Mitch Albom
