Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson

blond hair and the hazel eyes, had the chemotherapy and the radiation. His hair fell out, his face went gaunt as a skeleton. It’s supposed to be me, I thought. But my brother was not me, and he was not my uncle. He was a fighter, and had been since his youngest days, when we wrestled in the basement and he actually bit through my shoe until I screamed in pain and let him go.

And so he fought back. He battled the disease in Spain, where he lived, with the aid of an experimental drug that was not—and still is not—available in the United States. He flew all over Europe for treatments. After five years of treatment, the drug appeared to chase the cancer into remission.

That was the good news. The bad news was, my brother did not want me around—not me, nor anyone in the family. Much as we tried to call and visit, he held us at bay, insisting this fight was something he needed to do by himself. Months would pass without a word from him. Messages on his answering machine would go without reply. I was ripped with guilt for what I felt I should be doing for him and fueled with anger for his denying us the right to do it.

So once again, I dove into work. I worked because I could control it. I worked because work was sensible and responsive. And each time I would call my brother’s apartment in Spain and get the answering machine—him speaking in Spanish, another sign of how far apart we had drifted—I would hang up and work some more.

Perhaps this is one reason I was drawn to Morrie. He let me be where my brother would not.

Looking back, perhaps Morrie knew this all along.

It is a winter in my childhood, on a snow packed hill in our suburban neighborhood. My brother and I are on the sled, him on top, me on the bottom. I feel his chin on my shoulder and his feet on the backs of my knees.

The sled rumbles on icy patches beneath us. We pick up speed as we descend the hill.

“CAR!” someone yells.

We see it coming, down the street to our left. We scream and try to steer away, but the runners do not move. The driver slams his horn and hits his brakes, and we do what all kids do: we jump off. In our hooded parkas, we roll like logs down the cold, wet snow, thinking the next thing to touch us will be the hard rubber of a car tire. We are yelling “AHHHHHH” and we are tingling with fear, turning over and over, the world upside down, right side up, upside down.

And then, nothing. We stop rolling and catch our breath and wipe the dripping snow from our faces. The driver turns down the street, wagging his finger. We are safe. Our sled has thudded quietly into a snowbank, and ourfriends are slapping us now, saying “Cool” and “You could have died.”

I grin at my brother, and we are united by childish pride. That wasn’t so hard, we think, and we are ready to take on death again.

The Sixth Tuesday We Talk About Emotions

I walked past the mountain laurels and the Japa­nese maple, up the bluestone steps of Morrie’s house. The white rain gutter hung like a lid over the doorway. I rang the bell and was greeted not by Connie but by Morrie’s wife, Charlotte, a beautiful gray-haired woman who spoke in a lilting voice. She was not often at home when I came by—she continued working at MIT, as Morrie wished—and I was surprised this morning to see her.

“Morrie’s having a bit of a hard time today,” she said. She stared over my shoulder for a moment, then moved toward the kitchen.

I’m sorry, I said.

“No, no, he’ll be happy to see you,” she said quickly. “Sure …”

She stopped in the middle of the sentence, turning her head slightly, listening for something. Then she con­ tinued. “I’m sure … he’ll feel better when he knows you’re here.”

I lifted up the bags from the market—my normal food supply, I said jokingly—and she seemed to smile and fret at the same time.

“There’s already so much food. He hasn’t eaten any from last time.”

This took me by surprise. He hasn’t eaten any, I asked?

She opened the refrigerator and I saw familiar con­tainers of chicken salad, vermicelli, vegetables, stuffed squash, all things I had brought for Morrie. She opened the freezer and there was even more.

“Morrie can’t eat most of this food. It’s too hard for him to swallow. He has to eat soft things and liquid drinks now.”

But he never said anything, I said.

Charlotte smiled. “He doesn’t want to hurt your feel­ings.”

It wouldn’t have hurt my feelings. I just wanted to help in some way. I mean, I just wanted to bring him something …

“You are bringing him something. He looks forward to your visits. He talks about having to do this project with you, how he has to concentrate and put the time aside. I think it’s giving him a good sense of pur­pose …”

Again, she gave that faraway look, the tuning-in-­something-from-somewhere-else. I knew Morrie’s nights were becoming difficult, that he didn’t sleep through them, and that meant Charlotte often did not sleep through them either. Sometimes Morrie would lie awake coughing for hours—it would take that long to get the phlegm from his throat. There were health care workers now staying through the night and all those visitors dur­ing the day, former students, fellow professors, meditation teachers, tramping in and out of the house. On some days, Morrie had a half a dozen visitors, and they were often there when Charlotte returned from work. She han­dled it with patience, even though all these outsiders were soaking up her precious minutes with Morrie.

“… a sense of purpose,” she continued. “Yes. That’s good, you know.”

“I hope so,” I said.

I helped put the new food inside the refrigerator. The kitchen counter had all kinds of notes, messages, informa­tion, medical instructions. The table held more pill bottles than ever—Selestone for his asthma, Ativan to help him sleep, naproxen for infections—along with a powdered milk mix and laxatives. From down the hall, we heard the sound of a door open.

“Maybe he’s available now … let me go check.”

Charlotte glanced again at my food and I felt suddenly ashamed. All these reminders of things Morrie would never enjoy.

The small horrors of his illness were growing, and when I finally sat down with Morrie, he was coughing more than usual, a dry, dusty cough that shook his chest and made his head jerk forward. After one violent surge, he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a breath. I sat quietly because I thought he was recovering from his exertion.

“Is the tape on?” he said suddenly, his eyes still closed.

Yes, yes, I quickly said, pressing down the play and record buttons.

“What I’m doing now,” he continued, his eyes still closed, “is detaching myself from the experience.”

Detaching yourself?

“Yes. Detaching myself. And this is important—not just for someone like me, who is dying, but for someone like you, who is perfectly healthy. Learn to detach.”

He opened his eyes. He exhaled. “You know what the Buddhists say? Don’t cling to things, because every­thing is impermanent.”

But wait, I said. Aren’t you always talking about expe­riencing life? All the good emotions, all the bad ones?

“Yes. “

Well, how can you do that if you’re detached?

“Ah. You’re thinking, Mitch. But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”

I’m lost.

“Take any emotion—love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

“But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even,