Tuesdays With Morrie Read online

  "And, in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live every day when you don't know what's going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy-and you believe them! It's such nonsense."

  Weren't you ever afraid to grow old, I asked?

  "Mitch, I embrace aging."

  Embrace it?

  "It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."

  Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, "Oh, if I were young again." You never hear people say, "I wish I were sixty-five."

  He smiled. "You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five. "Listen. You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.

  "And Mitch?"

  He lowered his voice.

  "The fact is, you are going to die eventually." I nodded.

  "It won't matter what you tell yourself." I know.

  "But hopefully," he said, "not for a long, long time." He closed his eyes with a peaceful look, then asked me to adjust the pillows behind his head. His body needed constant adjustment to stay comfortable. It was propped in the chair with white pillows, yellow foam, and blue towels. At a quick glance, it seemed as if Morrie were being packed for shipping.

  "Thank you," he whispered as I moved the pillows. No problem, I said.

  "Mitch. What are you thinking?"

  I paused before answering. Okay, I said, I'm wondering how you don't envy younger, healthy people.

  "Oh, I guess I do." He closed his eyes. "I envy them being able to go to the health club, or go for a swim. Or dance. Mostly for dancing. But envy comes to me, I feel it, and then I let it go. Remember what I said about detachment? Let it go. Tell yourself, `That's envy, I'm going to separate from it now.' And walk away."

  He coughed-a long, scratchy cough-and he pushed a tissue to his mouth and spit weakly into it. Sitting there, I felt so much stronger than he, ridiculously so, as if I could lift him and toss him over my shoulder like a sack of flour. I was embarrassed by this superiority, because I did not feel superior to him in any other way.

  How do you keep from envying . . .

  "What?"

  Me?

  He smiled.

  "Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight.

  "You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue."

  He exhaled and lowered his eyes, as if to watch his breath scatter into the air.

  "The truth is, part of me is every age. I'm a three-year-old, I'm a 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?"

  I nodded.

  "How can I be envious of where you are-when I've been there myself?"

  "Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardises itself."

  -W. H. AUDEN, MORRIE 'S FAVORITE " POET

  The Eighth Tuesday We Talk About Money

  I held up the newspaper so that Morrie could see it:

  I DON'T WANT MY TOMBSTONE TO READ

  I NEVER OWNED A NETWORK."

  Morrie laughed, then shook his head. The morning sun was coming through the window behind him, falling on the pink flowers of the hibiscus plant that sat on the sill. The quote was from Ted Turner, the billionaire media mogul, founder of CNN, who had been lamenting his inability to snatch up the CBS network in a corporate megadeal. I had brought the story to Morrie this morning because I wondered if Turner ever found himself in my old professor's position, his breath disappearing, his body turning to stone, his days being crossed off the calendar one by one-would he really be crying over owning a network?

  "It's all part of the same problem, Mitch," Morrie said. "We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives. I think we should talk about that."

  Morrie was focused. There were good days and bad days now. He was having a good day. The night before, he had been entertained by a local a cappella group that had come to the house to perform, and he relayed the story excitedly, as if the Ink Spots themselves had dropped by for a visit. Morrie's love for music was strong even before he got sick, but now it was so intense, it moved him to tears. He would listen to opera sometimes at night, closing his eyes, riding along with the magnificent voices as they dipped and soared.

  "You should have heard this group last night, Mitch. Such a sound!"

  Morrie had always been taken with simple pleasures, singing, laughing, dancing. Now, more than ever, material things held little or no significance. When people die, you always hear the expression "You can't take it with you." Morrie seemed to know that a long time ago.

  "We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country," Morrie sighed. "Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it-and have it repeated to us-over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

  "Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it. `Guess what I got? Guess what I got?'

  "You know how I always interpreted that? These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.

  "Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."

  I glanced around Morrie's study. It was the same today as it had been the first day I arrived. The books held their same places on the shelves. The papers cluttered the same old desk. The outside rooms had not been improved or upgraded. In fact, Morrie really hadn't bought anything new-except medical equipment-in a long, long time, maybe years. The day he learned that he was terminally ill was the day he lost interest in his purchasing power.

  So the TV was the same old model, the car that Charlotte drove was the same old model, the dishes and the silverware and the towels-all the same. And yet the house had changed so drastically. It had filled with love and teaching and communication. It had filled with friendship and family and honesty and tears. It had filled with colleagues and students and meditation teachers and therapists and nurses and a cappella groups. It had become, in a very real way, a wealthy home, even though Morrie's bank account was rapidly depleting.

  "There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need," Morrie said. "You need food, you want a chocolate sun
dae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house.

  "The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?" What?

  "Offering others what you have to give."

  You sound like a Boy Scout.

  "I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard. There's a senior center that opened near here. Dozens of elderly people come there every day. If you're a young man or young woman and you have a skill, you are asked to come and teach it. Say you know computers. You come there and teach them computers. You are very welcome there. And they are very grateful. This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

  "There are plenty of places to do this. You don't need to have a big talent. There are lonely people in hospitals and shelters who only want some companionship. You play cards with a lonely older man and you find new respect for yourself, because you are needed. "Remember what I said about finding a meaningful life? I wrote it down, but now I can recite it: Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

  "You notice," he added, grinning, "there's nothing in there about a salary."

  I jotted some of the things Morrie was saying on a yellow pad. I did this mostly because I didn't want him to see my eyes, to know what I was thinking, that I had been, for much of my life since graduation, pursuing these very things he had been railing against-bigger toys, nicer house. Because I worked among rich and famous athletes, I convinced myself that my needs were realistic, my greed inconsequential compared to theirs.

  This was a smokescreen. Morrie made that obvious. "Mitch, if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."

  He paused, then looked at me. "I'm dying, right?" Yes.

  "Why do you think it's so important for me to hear other people's problems? Don't I have enough pain and suffering of my own?

  "Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad, it's as close to healthy as I ever feel.

  "Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back."

  He coughed and reached for the small bell that lay on the chair. He had to poke a few times at it, and I finally picked it up and put it in his hand.

  "Thank you," he whispered. He shook it weakly, trying to get Connie's attention.

  "This Ted Turner guy," Morrie said, "he couldn't think of anything else for his tombstone?"

  'Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn. "

  --MAHATMA GANDHI

  The Ninth Tuesday We Talk About How Love Goes On

  The leaves had begun to change color, turning the ride through West Newton into a portrait of gold and rust. Back in Detroit, the labor war had stagnated, with each side accusing the other of failing to communicate. The stories on the TV news were just as depressing. In rural Kentucky, three men threw pieces of a tombstone off a bridge, smashing the windshield of a passing car, killing a teenage girl who was traveling with her family on a religious pilgrimage. In California, the O. J. Simpson trial was heading toward a conclusion, and the whole country seemed to be obsessed. Even in airports, there were hanging TV sets tuned to CNN so that you could get an O.J. update as you made your way to a gate.

  I had tried calling my brother in Spain several times. I left messages saying that I really wanted to talk to him, that I had been doing a lot of thinking about us. A few weeks later, I got back a short message saying everything was okay, but he was sorry, he really didn't feel like talking about being sick.

  For my old professor, it was not the talk of being sick but the being sick itself that was sinking him. Since my last visit, a nurse had inserted a catheter into his penis, which drew the urine out through a tube and into a bag that sat at the foot of his chair. His legs needed constant tending (he could still feel pain, even though he could not move them, another one of ALS's cruel little ironies), and unless his feet dangled just the right number of inches off the foam pads, it felt as if someone were poking him with a fork. In the middle of conversations, Morrie would have to ask visitors to lift his foot and move it just an inch, or to adjust his head so that it fit more easily into the palm of the colored pillows. Can you imagine being unable to move your own head?

  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. In typical fashion, he found something philosophical in this.

  "I sum it up in my newest aphorism," he said. Let me hear it.

  "When you're in bed, you're dead."

  He smiled. Only Morrie could smile at something like that.

  He had been getting calls from the "Nightline" people and from Ted Koppel himself.

  "They want to come and do another show with me," he said. "But they say they want to wait."

  Until what? You're on your last breath? "Maybe. Anyhow, I'm not so far away." Don't say that.

  "I'm sorry."

  That bugs me, that they want to wait until you wither.

  "It bugs you because you look out for me."

  He smiled. "Mitch, maybe they are using me for a little drama. That's okay. Maybe I'm using them, too. They help me get my message to millions of people. I couldn't do that without them, right? So it's a compromise."

  He coughed, which turned into a long-drawn-out gargle, ending with another glob into a crushed tissue. "Anyhow," Morrie said, "I told them they better not wait too long, because my voice won't be there. Once this thing hits my lungs, talking may become impossible. I can't speak for too long without needing a rest now. I have already canceled a lot of the people who want to see me. Mitch, there are so many. But I'm too fatigued. If I can't give them the right attention, I can't help them." I looked at the tape recorder, feeling guilty, as if I were stealing what was left of his precious speaking time. "Should we skip it?" I asked. "Will it make you too tired?"

  Morrie shut his eyes and shook his head. He seemed to be waiting for some silent pain to pass. "No," he finally said. "You and I have to go on.

  "This is our last thesis together, you know." Our last thesis.

  "We want to get it right."

  I thought about our first thesis together, in college. It was Morrie's idea, of course. He told me I was good enough to write an honors project-something I had never considered.

  Now here we were, doing the same thing once more. Starting with an idea. Dying man talks to living man, tells him what he should know. This time, I was in less of a hurry to finish.

  "Someone asked me an interesting question yesterday," Morrie said now, looking over my shoulder at the wallhanging behind me, a quilt of hopeful messages that friends had stitched for him on his seventieth birthday. Each patch on the quilt had a different message: STAY THE COURSE, THE BEST IS YET TO BE, MORRIE-ALWAYS NO. 1 IN MENTAL HEALTH!

  What was the question? I asked.

  "If I worried about being forgotten after I died?" Well? Do you?

  "I don't think I will be. I've got so many people who have been involved with me in close, intimate ways. And love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone."

  Sounds like a song lyric-"love is how you stay alive."

  Morrie chuckled. "Maybe. But, Mitch, all this talk that we're doing?
Do you ever hear my voice sometimes when you're back home? When you're all alone? Maybe on the plane? Maybe in your car?"

  Yes, I admitted.

  "Then you will not forget me after I'm gone. Think of my voice and I'll be there."

  Think of your voice.

  "And if you want to cry a little, it's okay."

  Morrie. He had wanted to make me cry since I was a freshman. "One of these days, I'm gonna get to you," he would say.

  Yeah, yeah, I would answer.

  "I decided what I wanted on my tombstone," he said.

  I don't want to hear about tombstones. "Why? They make you nervous?"