Death and dying in contemporary society

Tuesdays With Morrie

People react in unpredictable ways to death. If someone we love dies suddenly in an accident, we know what to do. We have to arrange for burial and mourn our loved one. But many people do not die suddenly. They get sick, go to the doctor, find out they have a fatal or potentially fatal disease, and often live for some time after that diagnosis. People aren't always as clear about what they should do or how they should behave under such circumstances, and the person who is dying has to find his or her way through a complex situation. People in such a situation have time to evaluate their lives and come to grips with their fates.

The book Tuesdays with Morrie: an Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, by Mitch Albom, tells the story of Albom's visits with his former professor friend and mentor Morrie Schwartz. Albom meets with Morrie every Tuesday in the last months before Morrie died, rekindling an old relationship and learning important lessons from his old friend in the process. While it is often a cliche that people suddenly develop great wisdom when they know they are dying, Morrie has the emotional strength and intellectual capacity to share his insights with Albom, enriching Albom's life even as Morrie's life comes to an end.

Morrie did not let Albom provide meaningless chit-chat and banter. He maintained his mentor relationship with Albom, challenging him with tough questions and insisting that Morrie come up with questions himself. In this way, Morrie demonstrated not only the ability to lead his student but to be a student himself, challenging Albom to force Morrie to not flinch from the huge life questions that faced Morrie as he contemplated his impending death.

Morrie's determination to examine his fate unflinchingly took great strength, because Morrie had a devastating diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the disease that killed Lou Gehrig and that has so disabled the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. The terrible truth of this disease is that it would rob Morrie of all muscle movement while leaving his brain intact. Once Morrie got over the initial shock of the diagnosis, he decided to keep using the one thing ALS could not rob him of: his intellect. In addition he demonstrated great humanity, encouraging those who wanted to help not only to visit with him but to help him explore what it means to die. He looked into the abyss and decided to study it, and if possible to help others understand it as well, instead of shrinking back. As he told Albom the first day Albom came to visit, "I have to look at life uniquely now ... I can't go shopping. I can't take care of the bank accounts, I can't take out the garbage. But I can sit here with my dwindling days and look at what I think is important in life. I have both the time -- and the reason -- to do that." (p. 49-50).

Albom learned from the beginning. He found that Morrie wept when he read the news, wept for the victims in Bosnia and the other tragedies he read about in the paper. Albom noted that as a news reporter he came closer to these stories but felt less grief over them. Perhaps, he thought, death is the "great equalizer" (p. 51), the one thing that joins all humanity.

Morrie tries hard to put his younger friend at ease, even though he understands that Albom will face all these issues himself one day. Albom starts bringing a tape recorder, with the intent of telling Morrie's story after Morrie has died. However, he is embarrassed to be record these intimate conversations until Morrie says, "Mitch ... you don't understand. I want to tell you about my life. I want to tell you before I can't tell you any more. I want someone to hear my story." (p. 63) It was one more indication of the terrible nature of Morrie's illness: the time would come when his brain would still work but he would not have any way to communicate with people.

Morrie had lots of things he wanted to talk with Albom about -- feeling sorry for oneself, the fear of aging, and one that has probably crossed many people's minds -- regrets. Albom insightfully puts this issue where it belongs: it's an issue of selfishness. What have I missed out on? What did I deserve that I didn't get? Where was I deprived? Interestingly, Morrie understands the issue in the same way, even though Albom didn't present it in selfish terms. He said that people are so busy acquiring things and experiences that they do not stop to think about what they really do and do not want. The discussion had impact and importance for Albom. He made a list of major life issues, realizing that there were no definitive answers to life's questions. Morrie faced the same questions, but instead of telling Mitch Albom what he had discovered are and are not important, he insisted that Mitch sort it out himself. Even as he was dying, Morrie was still the professor.

Morrie began to deteriorate in the one area still useful for him -- communication. Mitch watched him on a TV show and saw that he couldn't gesture with his hands the way he had in the past, and that he had trouble pronouncing some words. Morrie was now losing what had become most important to him. In this interview, Morrie also revealed how profoundly he understood loss: his mother had died seventy years ago, and he still wept at the thought of losing her. Morrie knew very well what those who loved him were going through.

Throughout the book, Mitch includes anecdotes from his own life, written in short sections and printed in italics. After Mitch talks about the death of Morrie's mother, Mitch tells how his brother and he were nearly hit by a car on a sled. At the last moment the car swerves, and they are safe. The juxtaposition of their possible brush with death and Morrie's inexorable march toward death, with no chance that the car will swerve for him, dramatizes the significant difference between how people think about death when it's an abstract possibility compared to facing death as an impending certainty.