Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Before We Say Goodbye is the fourth book in a series of Before the Coffee Gets Cold book series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I wrote blogs about the first three books, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales from the Café, and Before Your Memory Fades.
In Before We Say Goodbye, the story continues with people trying to time travel and spend only as long as it takes in the past, until coffee gets cold, to visit their loved ones. In Before We Say Goodbye, the story is centred on seeing loved ones, saying goodbye properly and fixing things.
A daughter goes back to speak with her father kindly and accepts his gifts. Originally, the daughter yelled at her father for inquiring about her studies and refused gifts of her favourite food and her father died in a tsunami having survived the earthquake because he tried to go back to get the savings he kept for his daughter’s marriage someday. She goes back six years later to accept gifts and say thanks to her father for trying to look after her.
A woman goes back in time to meet her boyfriend and accept his wedding proposal so that he does not die from heart failure and feeling unloved. She was unable to say yes thinking she needed to have a career first but then re-examined her feelings.
A woman goes back in time to bid farewell to her beloved dog feeling guilty she fell asleep whilst the dog was dying.
The husband goes back in time to visit his wife and tell her she made him happy and that she was a good wife, on the day of their anniversary.
In all books in this unusual book series, people go back to see loved ones. Each book has a theme, which in this book series is centred on having a closure and fixing things before we say goodbye permanently for one can only travel in time once in their lifetime using Funiculi Funicula café in Tokyio.
The rules remain the same throughout books; one can travel in time and only stay for as long as it takes for a coffee to get cold; they have to sit on the same chair and cannot get up, or they will be withdrawn back to present instantly; they cannot change the present no matter what they say or do so many give up and do not go back, but sometimes, all it takes is to see a loved one, one more time and say goodbye.
Beautiful.
Thank you for reading.