Albom, Mitch - Tuesdays With Morrie

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1
Tuesdays with Morrie
an old man, a young man,
and life's greatest lesson
by Mitch Albom
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the enormous help
given to me in creating this book. For their
memories, their patience, and their guidance, I
wish to thank Charlotte, Rob, and Jonathan
Schwartz, Maurie Stein, Charlie Derber, Gordie
Fellman, David Schwartz, Rabbi Al Axelrad, and
the multitude of Morrie's friends and colleagues.
Also, special thanks to Bill Thomas, my editor,
for handling this project with just the right touch.
And, as always, my appreciation to David Black,
who often believes in me more than I do myself.
Mostly, my thanks to Morrie, for wanting to do
this last thesis together. Have you ever had a
teacher like this?
2
The Curriculum
The last class of my old professor's life took
place once a week in his house, by a window in
the study where he could watch a small hibiscus
plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on
Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject
was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from
experience.
No grades were given, but there were oral exams
each week. You were expected to respond to
questions, and you were expected to pose
questions of your own. You were also required to
perform physical tasks now and then, such as
lifting the professor's head to a comfortable spot
on the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge
of his nose. Kissing him good-bye earned you
extra credit.
No books were required, yet many topics were
covered, including love, work, community, family,
aging, forgiveness, and, finally, death. The last
lecture was brief, only a few words.
A funeral was held in lieu of graduation.
Although no final exam was given, you were
expected to produce one long paper on what was
learned. That paper is presented here.
The last class of my old professor's life had only
one student.
I was the student.
It is the late spring of 1979, a hot, sticky Saturday
afternoon. Hundreds of us sit together, side by
side, in rows of wooden folding chairs on the
main campus lawn. We wear blue nylon robes.
We listen impatiently to long speeches. When the
ceremony is over, we throw our caps in the air,
and we are officially graduated from college, the
senior class of Brandeis University in the city of
Waltham, Massachusetts. For many of us, the
curtain has just come down on childhood.
Afterward, I find Morrie Schwartz, my favorite
professor, and introduce him to my parents. He is
a small man who takes small steps, as if a strong
wind could, at any time, whisk him up into the
clouds. In his graduation day robe, he looks like
a cross between a biblical prophet and a
Christmas elf He has sparkling blue green eyes,
thinning silver hair that spills onto his forehead,
big ears, a triangular nose, and tufts of graying
eyebrows. Although his teeth are crooked and
3
his lower ones are slanted back-as if someone
had once punched them in-when he smiles it's as
if you'd just told him the first joke on earth.
He tells my parents how I took every class he
taught. He tells them, "You have a special boy
here. " Embarrassed, I look at my feet. Before we
leave, I hand my professor a present, a tan
briefcase with his initials on the front. I bought
this the day before at a shopping mall. I didn't
want to forget him. Maybe I didn't want him to
forget me.
"Mitch, you are one of the good ones," he says,
admiring the briefcase. Then he hugs me. I feel
his thin arms around my back. I am taller than he
is, and when he holds me, I feel awkward, older,
as if I were the parent and he were the child. He
asks if I will stay in touch, and without hesitation
I say, "Of course."
When he steps back, I see that he is crying.
The Syllabus
His death sentence came in the summer of 1994.
Looking back, Morrie knew something bad was
coming long before that. He knew it the day he
gave up dancing.
He had always been a dancer, my old professor.
The music didn't matter. Rock and roll, big band,
the blues. He loved them all. He would close his
eyes and with a blissful smile begin to move to
his own sense of rhythm. It wasn't always pretty.
But then, he didn't worry about a partner. Morrie
danced by himself.
He used to go to this church in Harvard Square
every Wednesday night for something called
"Dance Free." They had flashing lights and
booming speakers and Morrie would wander in
among the mostly student crowd, wearing a
white T-shirt and black sweatpants and a towel
around his neck, and whatever music was
playing, that's the music to which he danced.
He'd do the lindy to Jimi Hendrix. He twisted and
twirled, he waved his arms like a conductor on
amphetamines, until sweat was dripping down
the middle of his back. No one there knew he was
a prominent doctor of sociology, with years of
experience as a college professor and several
well-respected books. They just thought he was
some old nut.
Once, he brought a tango tape and got them to
play it over the speakers. Then he
commandeered the floor, shooting back and forth
4
like some hot Latin lover. When he finished,
everyone applauded. He could have stayed in
that moment forever.
But then the dancing stopped.
He developed asthma in his sixties. His breathing
became labored. One day he was walking along
the Charles River, and a cold burst of wind left
him choking for air. He was rushed to the
hospital and injected with Adrenalin.
A few years later, he began to have trouble
walking. At a birthday party for a friend, he
stumbled inexplicably. Another night, he fell
down the steps of a theater, startling a small
crowd of people.
"Give him air!" someone yelled.
He was in his seventies by this point, so they
whispered "old age" and helped him to his feet.
But Morrie, who was always more in touch with
his insides than the rest of us, knew something
else was wrong. This was more than old age. He
was weary all the time. He had trouble sleeping.
He dreamt he was dying.
He began to see doctors. Lots of them. They
tested his blood. They tested his urine. They put
a scope up his rear end and looked inside his
intestines. Finally, when nothing could be found,
one doctor ordered a muscle biopsy, taking a
small piece out of Morrie's calf. The lab report
came back suggesting a neurological problem,
and Morrie was brought in for yet another series
of tests. In one of those tests, he sat in a special
seat as they zapped him with electrical current-an
electric chair, of sortsand studied his
neurological responses.
"We need to check this further," the doctors said,
looking over his results.
"Why?" Morrie asked. "What is it?"
"We're not sure. Your times are slow." His times
were slow? What did that mean?
Finally, on a hot, humid day in August 1994,
Morrie and his wife, Charlotte, went to the
neurologist's office, and he asked them to sit
before he broke the news: Morrie had
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's
disease, a brutal, unforgiving illness of the
neurological system.
There was no known cure.
"How did I get it?" Morrie asked. Nobody knew.
5
"Is it terminal?"
Yes.
"So I'm going to die?"
Yes, you are, the doctor said. I'm very sorry.
He sat with Morrie and Charlotte for nearly two
hours, patiently answering their questions. When
they left, the doctor gave them some information
on ALS, little pamphlets, as if they were opening
a bank account. Outside, the sun was shining
and people were going about their business. A
woman ran to put money in the parking meter.
Another carried groceries. Charlotte had a million
thoughts running through her mind: How much
time do we have left? How will we manage? How
will we pay the bills?
My old professor, meanwhile, 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,
and as Morrie pulled weakly on the car door, he
felt as if he were dropping into a hole.
Now what? he thought.
As my old professor searched for answers, the
disease took him over, day by day, week by week.
He backed the car out of the garage one morning
and could barely push the brakes. That was the
end of his driving.
He kept tripping, so he purchased a cane. That
was the end of his walking free.
He went for his regular swim at the YMCA, but
found he could no longer undress himself. So he
hired his first home care worker-a theology
student named Tony-who helped him in and out
of the pool, and in and out of his bathing suit. In
the locker room, the other swimmers pretended
not to stare. They stared anyhow. That was the
end of his privacy.
In the fall of 1994, Morrie came to the hilly
Brandeis campus to teach his final college
course. He could have skipped this, of course.
The university would have understood. Why
suffer in front of so many people? Stay at home.
Get your affairs in order. But the idea of quitting
did not occur to Morrie.
Instead, he hobbled into the classroom, his home
6
for more than thirty years. Because of the cane,
he took a while to reach the chair. Finally, he sat
down, dropped his glasses off his nose, and
looked out at the young faces who stared back in
silence.
"My friends, I assume you are all here for the
Social Psychology class. I have been teaching
this course for twenty years, and this is the first
time I can say there is a risk in taking it, because
I have a fatal illness. I may not live to finish the
semester.
"If you feel this is a problem, I understand if you
wish to drop the course."
He smiled.
And that was the end of his secret.
ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and
leaves your body a pile of wax. Often, it begins
with the legs and works its way up. You lose
control of your thigh muscles, so that you cannot
support yourself standing. You lose control of
your trunk muscles, so that you cannot sit up
straight. By the end, if you are still alive, you are
breathing through a tube in a hole in your throat,
while your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned
inside a limp husk, perhaps able to blink, or cluck
a tongue, like something from a science fiction
movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh. This
takes no more than five years from the day you
contract the disease.
Morrie's doctors guessed he had two years left.
Morrie knew it was less.
But my old professor had made a profound
decision, one he began to construct the day he
came out of the doctor's office with a sword
hanging over his head. Do I wither up and
disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?
he had asked himself.
He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of
dying.
Instead, he would make death his final project,
the center point of his days. Since everyone was
going to die, he could be of great value, right? He
could be research. A human textbook. Study me
in my slow and patient demise. Watch what
happens to me. Learn with me.
Morrie would walk that final bridge between life
and death, and narrate the trip.
7
The fall semester passed quickly. The pills
increased. Therapy became a regular routine.
Nurses came to his house to work with Morrie's
withering legs, to keep the muscles active,
bending them back and forth as if pumping water
from a well. Massage specialists came by once a
week to try to soothe the constant, heavy
stiffness he felt. He met with meditation teachers,
and closed his eyes and narrowed his thoughts
until his world shrunk down to a single breath, in
and out, in and out.
One day, using his cane, he stepped onto the
curb and fell over into the street. The cane was
exchanged for a walker. As his body weakened,
the back and forth to the bathroom became too
exhausting, so Morrie began to urinate into a
large beaker. He had to support himself as he did
this, meaning someone had to hold the beaker
while Morrie filled it.
Most of us would be embarrassed by all this,
especially at Morrie's age. But Morrie was not like
most of us. When some of his close colleagues
would visit, he would say to them, "Listen, I have
to pee. Would you mind helping? Are you okay
with that?"
Often, to their own surprise, they were.
In fact, he entertained a growing stream of
visitors. He had discussion groups about dying,
what it really meant, how societies had always
been afraid of it without necessarily
understanding it. He told his friends that if they
really wanted to help him, they would treat him
not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a
sharing of their problems-the way they had
always shared their problems, because Morrie
had always been a wonderful listener.
For all that was happening to him, his voice was
strong and inviting, and his mind was vibrating
with a million thoughts. He was intent on proving
that the word "dying" was not synonymous with
"useless."
The New Year came and went. Although he never
said it to anyone, Morrie knew this would be the
last year of his life. He was using a wheelchair
now, and he was fighting time to say all the
things he wanted to say to all the people he
loved. When a colleague at Brandeis died
suddenly of a heart attack, Morrie went to his
funeral. He came home depressed.
"What a waste," he said. "All those people saying
all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to
hear any of it."
8
Morrie had a better idea. He made some calls. He
chose a date. And on a cold Sunday afternoon,
he was joined in his home by a small group of
friends and family for a "living funeral." Each of
them spoke and paid tribute to my old professor.
Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a
poem:
"My dear and loving cousin . . .
Your ageless heart
as you move through time, layer on layer,
tender sequoia . . ."
Morrie cried and laughed with them. And all the
heartfelt things we never get to say to those we
love, Morrie said that day. His "living funeral"
was a rousing success.
Only Morrie wasn't dead yet.
In fact, the most unusual part of his life was
about to unfold.
The Student
At this point, I should explain what had
happened to me since that summer day when I
last hugged my dear and wise professor, and
promised to keep in touch.
I did not keep in touch.
In fact, I lost contact with most of the people I
knew in college, including my, beer-drinking
friends and the first woman I ever woke up with
in the morning. The years after graduation
hardened me into someone quite different from
the strutting graduate who left campus that day
headed for New York City, ready to offer the world
his talent.
The world, I discovered, was not all that
interested. I wandered around my early twenties,
paying rent and reading classifieds and
wondering why the lights were not turning green
for me. My dream was to be a famous musician (I
played the piano), but after several years of dark,
empty nightclubs, broken promises, bands that
kept breaking up and producers who seemed
excited about everyone but me, the dream
soured. I was failing for the first time in my life.
At the same time, I had my first serious
encounter with death. My favorite uncle, my
mother's brother, the man who had taught me
9
music, taught me to drive, teased me about girls,
thrown me a football-that one adult whom I
targeted as a child and said, "That's who I want
to be when I grow up"-died of pancreatic cancer
at the age of forty-four. He was a short,
handsome man with a thick mustache, and I was
with him for the last year of his life, living in an
apartment just below his. I watched his strong
body wither, then bloat, saw him suffer, night
after night, doubled over at the dinner table,
pressing on his stomach, his eyes shut, his
mouth contorted in pain. "Ahhhhh, God," he
would moan. "Ahhhhhh, Jesus!" The rest of us-
my aunt, his two young sons, me-stood there,
silently, cleaning the plates, averting our eyes.
It was the most helpless I have ever felt in my life.
One night in May, my uncle and I sat on the
balcony of his apartment. It was breezy and
warm. He looked out toward the horizon and said,
through gritted teeth, that he wouldn't be around
to see his kids into the next school year. He
asked if I would look after them. I told him not to
talk that way. He stared at me sadly.
He died a few weeks later.
After the funeral, my life changed. I felt as if time
were suddenly precious, water going down an
open drain, and I could not move quickly enough.
No more playing music at half-empty night clubs.
No more writing songs in my apartment, songs
that no one would hear. I returned to school. I
earned a master's degree in journalism and took
the first job offered, as a sports writer. Instead of
chasing my own fame, I wrote about famous
athletes chasing theirs. I worked for newspapers
and freelanced for magazines. I worked at a pace
that knew no hours, no limits. I would wake up in
the morning, brush my teeth, and sit down at the
typewriter in the same clothes I had slept in. My
uncle had worked for a corporation and hated it-
same thing, every day-and I was determined
never to end up like him.
I bounced around from New York to Florida and
eventually took a job in Detroit as a columnist for
the Detroit Free Press. The sports appetite in that
city was insatiable-they had professional teams
in football, basketball, baseball, and hockey-and
it matched my ambition. In a few years, I was not
only penning columns, I was writing sports
books, doing radio shows, and appearing
regularly on TV, spouting my opinions on rich
football players and hypocritical college sports
programs. I was part of the media thunderstorm
that now soaks our country. I was in demand.
I stopped renting. I started buying. I bought a
house on a hill. I bought cars. I invested in stocks
10
and built a portfolio. I was cranked to a fifth gear,
and everything I did, I did on a deadline. I
exercised like a demon. I drove my car at
breakneck speed. I made more money than I had
ever figured to see. I met a dark-haired woman
named Janine who somehow loved me despite
my schedule and the constant absences. We
married after a seven year courtship. I was back
to work a week after the wedding. I told her-and
myself-that we would one day start a family,
something she wanted very much. But that day
never came.
Instead, I buried myself in accomplishments,
because with accomplishments, I believed I could
control things, I could squeeze in every last piece
of happiness before I got sick and died, like my
uncle before me, which I figured was my natural
fate.
As for Morrie? Well, I thought about him now and
then, the things he had taught me about "being
human" and "relating to others," but it was
always in the distance, as if from another life.
Over the years, I threw away any mail that came
from Brandeis University, figuring they were only
asking for money. So I did not know of Morrie's
illness. The people who might have told me were
long forgotten, their phone numbers buried in
some packed-away box in the attic.
It might have stayed that way, had I not been
flicking through the TV channels late one night,
when something caught my ear . . .
The Audiovisual
In March of 1995, a limousine carrying Ted
Koppel, the host of ABC-TV's "Nightline" pulled
up to the snow-covered curb outside Morrie's
house in West Newton, Massachusetts.
Morrie was in a wheelchair full-time now, getting
used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from
the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair. He
had begun to cough while eating, and chewing
was a chore. His legs were dead; he would never
walk again.
Yet he refused to be depressed. Instead, Morrie
had become a lightning rod of ideas. He jotted
down his thoughts on yellow pads, envelopes,
folders, scrap paper. He wrote bite-sized
philosophies about living with death's shadow:
"Accept what you are able to do and what you
are not able to do"; "Accept the past as past,
without denying it or discarding it"; "Learn to
摘要：

1TuesdayswithMorrieanoldman,ayoungman,andlife'sgreatestlessonbyMitchAlbomAcknowledgmentsIwouldliketoacknowledgetheenormoushelpgiventomeincreatingthisbook.Fortheirmemories,theirpatience,andtheirguidance,IwishtothankCharlotte,Rob,andJonathanSchwartz,MaurieStein,CharlieDerber,GordieFellman,DavidSchwart...

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