Len Holder thinks his mother is dead â until she reappears one morning in his living room.
She doesnât remember being dead. Sheâs just confused.
And instead of her burial clothes, sheâs wearing a Dallas Cowboys warmup suit.
At seventy-eight, Len considers himself a failure. He spent years taking care of Mom while his brother Joey became a famous sportscaster. Now he lives alone, tinkering with a novel he canât seem to finish.
For a week, Len relives a strained relationship with Mom while other mysteries pile up. He keeps hearing fragments of Joeyâs radio show. His sister reports disturbing phone calls. Strangers he meets look like people from his past. Another stranger has taken over his insurance office.
Then Len gets word that his beloved boss Miranda has been gravely injured in a car accident. Eventually, Mirandaâs fate and a shocking secret from the past reveal that Sharon Holderâs resurrection is not what it seems to be.
The Seven-Day Resurrection is a must-read for anyone who has been thrust into the role of caregiver.
Len Holder thinks his mother is dead â until she reappears one morning in his living room.
She doesnât remember being dead. Sheâs just confused.
And instead of her burial clothes, sheâs wearing a Dallas Cowboys warmup suit.
At seventy-eight, Len considers himself a failure. He spent years taking care of Mom while his brother Joey became a famous sportscaster. Now he lives alone, tinkering with a novel he canât seem to finish.
For a week, Len relives a strained relationship with Mom while other mysteries pile up. He keeps hearing fragments of Joeyâs radio show. His sister reports disturbing phone calls. Strangers he meets look like people from his past. Another stranger has taken over his insurance office.
Then Len gets word that his beloved boss Miranda has been gravely injured in a car accident. Eventually, Mirandaâs fate and a shocking secret from the past reveal that Sharon Holderâs resurrection is not what it seems to be.
The Seven-Day Resurrection is a must-read for anyone who has been thrust into the role of caregiver.
When Len Holderâs mother came back to life, he wasnât completely surprised. Sheâd been appearing in his dreams lately: emerging from the car with an armload of groceries; sprinkling herbs into a pot of homemade chili; loading the dishwasher, sorting laundry, cleaning the oven. Activities impossible in her last, miserable years. But the dreams were so vivid that each time he awoke, Len had to reorient himself. He was alone in the house and had been since her death.
This particular morning Len awoke not from a dream, but to singing:
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âTwo little clouds, one summerâs day,
Went flying through the sky;
They went so fast they bumped their heads,
And both began to cry.â
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Rising from his bed, Len followed the voice to the living room. She stood at the window, watching leaves float down from the red oak tree.
âMom?â
She turned to him, her eyes glazed. âHi, Len.â
âMom ⌠what ⌠where did you come from?â
âIs this my house?â Slowly, she wandered about the room, her fingers brushing the pretentious furnishings. The Ethan Allen sofa. The Stickley lamp table. The swan figurines above the fireplace.
She stopped to admire an Edward Hicks print of Noahâs ark. âHow beautiful!â she said. âIs this mine, too?â
Len approached cautiously. If she was a ghost, she didnât look like one. Instead of her burial clothes, she wore a Dallas Cowboys warmup suit.
âMom,â he asked, âhow on Earth did you get here?â
She didnât seem to hear. Her attention returned to the leaf festival in the backyard. âIs it fall again already? I love this time of year.â
This didnât feel like a dream. It had texture, and the haziness of dreams was absent.
Len reached out to touch her shoulder. It was solid. His hand slid down to her wrist. The pulse was steady, her skin was warm.
She drifted past him and sank into the leather recliner. âDo you have any key lime pie?â
âWhat?â
âSeems like ages since Iâve had anything to eat.â
âI ⌠uh ⌠Iâll see whatâs in the fridge.â Numbly, he headed for the kitchen. Her voice followed him, humming the lullaby.
The pie request was a familiar one. In the final weeks before her death, sweets were all she would eat. The hospice nurse said not to worry. âLet her have whatever she wants. It wonât make any difference.â
Drawing a dessert plate from the cupboard, Len noticed his motherâs medical diary lying on the counter. He thought heâd thrown it away seven years ago. Now, it lay open to the last page:
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11/01/2013
6:30 p.m. BP 81/41, pulse 101. Still unconscious, but some sort of distress. Chest heaving. Groping gestures for several minutes.
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8:30 p.m. BP 79/41, pulse 111. Erratic breathing, gradually stabilized.
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10:30 p.m. BP 102/44, pulse 125. More groping. Breathing shallow but regular.
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11/02/2013
12:30 a.m. BP 90/42, pulse 133. Frantic gasping and heaving. Hospice summoned.
The nurse had arrived within minutes, giving Mom a light dose of morphine to calm her. âI wouldnât bother recording her vitals anymore,â she advised sympathetically. âIt should be just a matter of hours.â
Meticulous to the end, Len made a final entry that afternoon.
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4:36 p.m. No BP. No pulse. No respiration.
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The diary said nothing about the sorrow frozen on his motherâs face. Nothing about Len and Olivia sobbing in each otherâs arms. Nothing about the terrible emptiness of her bedroom after the attendants wheeled her away.
Dutifully, Len had phoned Joey, Cindy, and their children. Those who lived in town came over to sit with him. The conversation was awkward. None of them reminisced about Mom or shed a tear.
The sun peeked through the kitchen window, reminding Len that this was a work day. Scrolling through his phone menu, he hesitated. What excuse could he give?
His call went to voicemail. âMiranda, itâs me,â he said. âSomething â uh â unexpected has come up. Iâll be at home today. Call if you need me.â
Len checked his calendar for November 30, 2020. No appointments, although he did have a batch of open claims on his desk.
He placed a slice of pie on the plate and carried it to the living room. Mom sat in her chair, looking around. âLen, is this my house?â
âYes.â
âWhy canât I remember?â
âWhat do you remember, Mom? Where did you come from just now?â
She stared blankly at the pie, as though wondering what to do with it. âWhat time does Wheel of Fortune come on?â
âLate this afternoon, I think.â Len hadnât watched a game show since her death and hoped heâd never have to again.
A voice murmured from down the hall. Probably the clock radio. He ignored it and perched on the sofaâs armrest. âThis is so good!â she exclaimed, tasting the pie. âDid you make it?â
âNo, itâs one of those frozen things.â In her last few weeks, Mom was too blind and weak to feed herself. They had to spoon-feed her like a baby. Sometimes she would sip a nutrient drink, but Len could see that it gave her no pleasure.
Fleetingly, he wondered where the pie had come from. He didnât remember buying it.
A smile crossed her face. âLen, do you remember that song about the two little clouds? My mother used to sing that to me when I got scared of the thunder.â
âYou sang it to me, too,â he said. âWhen I was little.â
âDid I?â She took another bite.
The radio voice grew louder. It sounded like Joeyâs morning talk show. Len followed it into his brotherâs old bedroom.
âAaron Rodgers of the Packers is everybodyâs pick for most valuable player,â said the voice. âBut quarterbacks win that award all the time. Who would you choose? Think about it, and weâll start taking calls right after this message.â
There was no radio in Joeyâs room. Nothing but his bedframe and mattress, stripped and left bare since his wedding day in 1962.
Len checked the closet and peeked under the bed. The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.
This had to be a dream. He went to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water. It made no difference. Joeyâs voice droned on. From the living room, Momâs hummed away.
Len had just turned sixty-two when she suffered her first hip fracture. The rehab period was upsetting to both of them. Some of the nursing home residents seemed little more than house plants, cleaned, fed, and watered by underpaid attendants. At supper each evening, Len and his mother watched one of them wheel a shrunken old lady out of her room and park her at a nearby table. Someone brought a tray of food and tried to coax her into eating. The patient stared vacantly into space, ignoring the meal until the aide rolled her back to the room. As far as Len knew, she never ate anything, never spoke, never had any visitors.
The bleak atmosphere brought out the worst in Mom. âThey wonât leave me alone when Iâm sleeping,â she complained, âbut when I press the call button, they ignore me. The food in this place is terrible. The TV control doesnât work right. These gowns make my skin itch. And this bedâs too soft, it makes my back ache.â She griped the entire six weeks.
At the end of rehab, Doctor Kirby recommended full-time companionship. âOnce theyâve fallen, theyâre likely to do it again.â
âPlease donât leave me in this place!â she begged tearfully. So Len took her home, assuming responsibility because no one else would. Mom and Joey didnât get along. Cindy lived in Pennsylvania, conveniently distant. The grandchildren rarely gave her a passing thought. Len had his own issues, but she was his mother. Surrendering his apartment, he moved back into his old bedroom and hired Olivia to watch over her while he was at work. The arrangement lasted five years, until her death.
Len returned to the living room, where she was polishing off the pie. âMom,â he began. How to phrase it? âMom, I havenât seen you in quite a while. Where have you been?â
She looked around. âIs this my house?â
âYes, Mom. All yours.â
Now he noticed silence from Joeyâs room. The voice was gone.
Mom clicked on the TV and began watching the Today show. Len studied her from the sofa, a tide of dark memories washing over him. Among them, the feeling that something else was amiss. Something more than Joeyâs disembodied voice and his motherâs reembodied spirit.
âDeath was so arbitrary. ... Sometimes death was sneaky.â What if resurrection occurs? Len grapples with this question in the fascinating novel, The Seven-Day Resurrection. Writer Chevron Ross builds on an interesting premise and entangles the reader in a series of questions from the start. What can explain the presence of Lenâs mother in his house after her death? Is it imagination, an anomaly, a cosmic glitch, a psychiatric or physiological disorder, or senility?
Ross has entwined several themes in his book. Delicate nuances of the co-dependent relationship between a 70-year-old man and his 90-year-old mother are central. In crisscrossing timelines, the characters experience different time-lapses in the future and the past. Then, there are stories around the myriad characters - Olivia, the caretaker, Miranda, Lenâs boss, Lenâs siblings, Lenâs teenage angst, aspirations as a writer, life as a loner, and insurance claims handler.
My favorite overarching theme is the nostalgia of the Depression-era and the World War. Ross brings out the imprints of the war on the life of simple people. He tells how the years of want and struggle made the people bitter, frugal, and eventually hoarders, of both things and memories. The conversations between Len and his mother make up a major part of the narrative. Another part is Lenâs confusion about the happenings around him and recollections of his life.
An interesting writing technique is using snippets from Lenâs writing drafts in the novel. When the first draft of The Farm Tree appears in the book, it is almost confusing. I paused to grasp how the dominant story and this narrative were connected. At a point, it seemed there were too many characters to track. However, I saw the connection. The strong, caring father figure of The Farm Tree and the incidents around bullying were easy to identify. They are reflections of Lenâs yearnings since his teenage.
This book is well-researched and has impeccable writing. It is not a zippy read. It requires time and attention. This should in no way discourage a reader because the book does not weigh you down. It carefully builds on the characters, making them endearing and relatable. The writer sketches portraits of a world that is now a fast-disappearing memory, while also keeping it contemporary by referencing the pandemic. The mystery of the resurrection keeps you engaged till the end.