Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson

by Mitch Albom

“I always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books. I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you.”

“Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait, Mitch. Not everyone gets the time I’m getting. Not everyone is as lucky.”

“I mourn my dwindling time, but I cherish the chance it gives me to make things right.”

“If I could have had another son, I would have liked it to be you.” I dropped my eyes, kneading the dying flesh of his feet between my fingers. For a moment, I felt afraid, as if accepting his words would somehow betray my own father. But when I looked up, I saw Morrie smiling through tears and I knew there was no betrayal in a moment like this. All I was afraid of was saying good-bye.

“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’ll listen.”

“Last night ...” Morrie said softly. Yes? Last night? “... 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.” His eyes widened. “Mitch, it was a most incredible feeling. The sensation of accepting what was happening, being at peace. I was thinking about a dream I had last week, where I was crossing a bridge into something unknown. Being ready to move on to whatever is next.” But you didn’t. Morrie waited a moment. He shook his head slightly. “No, I didn’t. But I felt that I could. Do you understand? “That’s what we’re all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing.” Which is? “Make peace with living.”

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

What if you had one day perfectly healthy, I asked? What would you do? “Twenty-four hours?” Twenty-four hours. “Let’s see... I’d get up in the morning, do my exercises, have a lovely breakfast of sweet rolls and tea, go for a swim, then have my friends come over for a nice lunch. I’d have them come one or two at a time so we could talk about their families, their issues, talk about how much we mean to each other. “Then I’d like to go for a walk, in a garden with some trees, watch their colors, watch the birds, take in the nature that I haven’t seen in so long now. “In the evening, we’d all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta, maybe some duck—I love duck—and then we’d dance the rest of the night. I’d dance with all the wonderful dance partners out there, until I was exhausted. And then I’d go home and have a deep, wonderful sleep.” That’s it? “That’s it.”

After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot—how could he find perfection in such an average day? Then

“There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like. “In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you’re too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.

when those he loved had left the room just for a moment—to grab coffee in the kitchen, the first time none of them were with him since the coma began—Morrie stopped breathing. And he was gone. I believe he died this way on purpose. I believe he wanted no chilling moments, no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it, the way he had been haunted by his mother’s death-notice telegram or by his father’s corpse in the city morgue.

“You talk, I’ll listen,” he had said. I tried doing that in my head and, to my happiness, found that the imagined conversation felt almost natural. I looked down at my hands, saw my watch and realized why. It was Tuesday.

I look back sometimes at the person I was before I rediscovered my old professor. I want to talk to that person. I want to tell him what to look out for, what mistakes to avoid. I want to tell him to be more open, to ignore the lure of advertised values, to pay attention when your loved ones are speaking, as if it were the last time you might hear them. Mostly I want to tell that person to get on an airplane and visit a gentle old man in West Newton, Massachusetts, sooner rather than later, before that old man gets sick and loses his ability to dance.

if Professor Morrie Schwartz taught me anything at all, it was this: there is no such thing as “too late” in life. He was changing until the day he said good-bye.

“Today, I give to you.”

And yet, now and then, there is this sense of emptiness. Of purpose. I work a lot. I am not always sure what for. I think a lot of successful people from my generation are hitting this wall right about now: they’ve burned themselves to a crisp, and the check-book isn’t the source of joy that it used to be. I find myself drawn more and more to the simplicity of my old professor. Here is Morrie, looking death in the eye—every morning he gets up, the ghost is a little closer—yet he maintains this optimistic, even cheery outlook.

We hope the readers find a piece of themselves in us, every son who had a father, every student who had a teacher, every kid who had a coach, a mentor, a source of wisdom.

the best last lesson one generation can teach the next: how to die with peace about how you’ve lived.