John Lubawski

“Don’t be burdened by this, Tess,” her mother had said. “Mom, I need to tell somebody.” “What’s stopping you, honey? . . . Tell everyone.” “I called Father Carroll.” “That’s a start.” “I haven’t gone to church in so long.” “But . . . you’ve gone to God. Every night.”
― Mitch Albom, First Phone Call from Heaven

“And 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.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“I made the wrong choice,” I whispered. My mother shook her head. “A child should never have to choose.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“OUR KITCHEN TABLE WAS ROUND and made of oak. One afternoon when we were in grade school, my sister and I carved our names in it with steak knives. We hadn’t finished when we heard the door open—our mother was home from work—so we threw the steak knives back in the drawer. My sister grabbed the biggest thing she could find, a half gallon of apple juice, and plopped it down. When my mother entered, wearing her nurse’s outfit, her arms full of magazines, we must have said, “Hi, Mom” too quickly, because she immediately became suspicious. You can see that in your mother’s face right away, that “What did you kids do?” look. Maybe because we were sitting at an otherwise empty table at 5:30 in the afternoon with a half gallon of apple juice between us. Anyhow, without letting go of her magazines, she nudged the juice aside and saw CHAR and ROBER—which was as far as we got—and she let out a loud, exasperated sound, something like “uhhhhch.” Then she screamed, “Great, just great!” and in my childish mind, I thought maybe it wasn’t so bad. Great was great, right? My father was traveling in those days, and my mother threatened his wrath when he got home. But that night as we sat at the table eating a meat loaf with a hard-boiled egg inside it—a recipe she had read somewhere, perhaps in one of those magazines she carried—my sister and I kept glancing at our work. “You know you’ve completely ruined this table,” my mother said. “Sorry,” we mumbled. “And you could have cut your fingers off with those knives.” We sat there, admonished, lowering our heads to the obligatory level for penance. But we were both thinking the same thing. Only my sister said it. “Should we finish, so at least we spell our names right?” I stopped breathing for a moment, astonished at her courage. My mother shot her a dagger-like stare. Then she burst out laughing. And my sister burst out laughing. And I spit out a mouthful of meatloaf. We never finished the names. They remained there always as CHAR and ROBER. My father, of course, blew a gasket when he got home. But I think over the years, long after we’d departed Pepperville Beach, my mother came to like the idea that we had left something behind, even if we were a few letters short.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day