Tuesdays with Morrie

by Mitch Albom

He was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world
stop? Don't they know what has happened to me? But the world did not stop,
it took no notice at all.
---
"There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some
mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too loing. Then I
get up and say, "I want to live..."
---

"All right, I'll be your coach. And you can be my player. You can play all
the lovely parts of life that I'm too old for now."
Sometimes we eat together in a cafeteria. Morrie, to my delight, is even
more of a slob than I am. He talks instead of chewing, laughs with his
mouth open, delivers a passionate thought through a mouthful of egg salad,
the little yellow pieces spewing from his teeth.
It cracks me up. The whole time I know him, I have two overwhelming
desires: to hug him and to give him a napkin.
---
"Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but
you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it
shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you
should never take anything for granted."

"A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live
somewehre in the middle."
Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.
"A wrestling match," He laughs. "Yes you could describe life that way."
So which side wins, I ask?
"Love wins. Love always wins."
---
"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep,
even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is
because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your
life is to devote yurself to loving others, devote yourself to your
community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives
you purpose and meaning."
--
page 57:
"Mitch, I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each morning, a few tears, and that's all. It's only horrible if you see it that way. It's horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing. But it's also wonderful beacuse of all the time i get to say good-bye. Not everyone is so lucky."
---
Following her instructions, I leaned over, locked my forearms under Morrie's armpits, and hooked him toward me, as if lifting a large log from underneath. Then I straightened up, hoisting him as I rose. Normally, when you lift someone, you expect their arms to tighten around your grip, but Morrie could not do this. He was mostly dead weight, and I felt his head bounce softly on my shoulder and his body sag against me like a big damp loaf.

Holding him like that moved me in a way I cannot describe, except to say I felt the seeds of death inside his shriveling frame, and as I laid him in his chair, adjusting his head on the pillows, I had the coldest realization that our time is running out. i had to do something.
---
Do you beleive in reincarnation? I ask.
"Perhaps."
What would you come back as?
"If I had my choice, a gazelle."
"A gazelle."
"Yes. So graceful. So fast."
A gazelle?
Morrie smiles at me. "You think that's strange?"
I study his shrunken frame, the loose clothes, the socks-wrapped feet that rest stiffly off from rubber cushions, unable to move, like a prisoner in leg irons. I picture a gazelle racing across the desert.
No, I say. i don't think that's strange at all.
--
"The truth is, part of me is every age. I'm a three-year-old,five-year-old, I'm a thirty-seven-year-old, I'm a fifty-year-old. I've been through all of them, and I know what it's like. I delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. Do you understand?"
"How can I be envious of where you are - when I've been there myself?"
--
Because I worked among rich and famous athletes, I convinced myself that my needs were realistic, my greed inconsequential compared to theirs."
--
With each visit, Morrie seemed to be melting into his chair, his spine taking on its shape. still, every morning he insisted on being lifted from his bed and wheeled to his study, deposited there among his books and papers and the hibiscus plant on the windowsill.
--
"It's sad, because a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you're in a time like I am, when you are not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be here on a night when you're coughing and can't sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful."
---
I saw the paleness of his skin, the stray white hairs, the way his arms hung limp and helpless.
--
"The problem, is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family the way we care about our own.
"Believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning - birth- and we all have the same end- death. So how different can we be?"
---
It is 1979, a basketball game in the Brandeis gym. The team is doing well, and the student section begins a chant, "We're number one! We're number one!" Morrie is sitting nearby. He is puzzled by the cheer. At one point, in the midst of "We're number one!" he rises and yells, "Whats wrong with being number two?"
---
Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
--
page 170:
"You'll come to my grave? To tell me your problems?"
My problems?
“Yes.”
And you'll give me answers?
“I'll give you what I can. Don't I always?”
I picture his grave, on the hill, overlooking the pond, some little nine-foot piece of earth where they will place him, cover him with dirt, put a stone on top. Maybe in a few weeks? Maybe in a few days? I see myself sitting there alone, arms across my knees, staring into space.
It won't be the same, I say, not being able to hear you talk.
“Ah, talk…”
He closes his eyes and smiles.
“Tell you what. After I'm dead, you talk. And I listen.”
---
page 172:
"I had a terrible spell. It went on for hours. And I really wasn't sure I was going to make it. No breath. No end to the choking. At one point,I started to get dizzy... and then I felt a certain peace. I felt that I was ready to go."
--
p. 173

“It's natural to die,” he said again. “The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves a part of nature. We think because we're human we're something above nature.”
He smiled at the plant.
“We're not. Everything that gets born, dies.” He looked at me.
“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”

This is the last sentence Morrie got out before I did: “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

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