'Love You Forever': A Portrait of Parental Extremes?

The son in the book finally sees how his mother loved him when he becomes a father himself. The turning point comes when he visits his elderly mother. Her bedroom wall is covered with pictures of her son, from childhood to adulthood. (Significantly, no pictures of mother are seen in the son's house.) Munsch's use of repetition is poignant here when he writes that the mother "got older and older and older." The son holds his old mother in his lap and sings,

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my Mommy you'll be."

The son's hair is greying at the temples; no matter how old you are, you're still someone's child. Later that night, he "[stands] for a long time at the top of the stairs". Being the page with the shortest text, this part of the book is the subtlest. It is also the most ambiguous. Does he feel sad that his mother is dying, or regretful that he didn't visit her sooner? He stands outside his infant daughter's bedroom in silent contemplation. Finally, he picks her up and sings the song that his mother sang to him his whole life.

The message of the Love You Forever is [munsch_old.t] clear when it isn't overshadowed by the somewhat surreal plot of the book. The mother's love overcomes distance and time, but does it transcend death? Both the son and the mother sing of their love lasting as "As long as [they're] living"; the son visits his mother when she tells him she's "'very old and sick'". Love endures when we give to future generations, through our deeds and our words, the gift of love that our parents give us.

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