TuesdayswithMorrie.doc

1、Tuesdays with MorrieAn old man, a young man and lifes greatest lessonBy Mitch Albom MITCH ALBOM is the author of six previous books. A nationally syndicated columnist for the Detroit Free Press and a nationally syndicated radio host for ABC and WJR-AM, Albom has, for more than a decade, been named t

2、op sports columnist in the nation by the Sports Editors of America, the highest honor in the field. A panelist on ESPNs Sports Reporters, Albom also regularly serves as a commentator for that network. He serves on numerous charitable boards and has founded two charities in metropolitan Detroit: The

3、Dream Fund, which helps underprivileged youth study the arts, and A Time to Help, a monthly volunteer program. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.Tuesdays with Morrie has been published in thirty-one languages in thirty-six countries.The Curriculum The last class of my old professors life t

4、ook 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

5、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 professors head to a comfortable spot on the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Kissing him g

6、ood-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 exp

7、ected to produce one long paper on what was learned. That paper is presented here.The last class of my old professors 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 chai

8、rs 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 curt

9、ain 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 bi

10、blical 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 his lower ones are slanted backas if someone had once punched them inwhen he smiles

11、 its as if youd 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

12、day before at a shopping mall. I didnt want to forget him. Maybe I didnt 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 we

13、re 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 d

14、ay he gave up dancing.He had always been a dancer, my old professor. The music didnt 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 wasnt always pretty. But then, he didnt worry about a par

15、tner. 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 aro

16、und his neck, and whatever music was playing, thats the music to which he danced. Hed 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 sociolo

17、gy, 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 like some hot Latin lover. When he finished, ev

18、eryone 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 w

19、ith 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

20、 “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 test

21、ed 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 Morries calf. The lab report came back suggesting a neurological problem, and Morrie was broug

22、ht in for yet another series of tests. In one of those tests, he sat in a special seat as they zapped him with electrical currentan 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

23、 it?“Were 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 neurologists office, and he asked them to sit before he broke the news: Morrie had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig

24、s disease, a brutal, unforgiving illness of the neurological system.There was no known cure.“How did I get it?“ Morrie asked.Nobody knew.“Is it terminal?“Yes.“So Im going to die?“Yes, you are, the doctor said. Im very sorry.He sat with Morrie and Charlotte for nearly two hours, patiently answering t

25、heir 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 m

26、illion 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. Shouldnt the world stop? Dont they know what has happened to me?But the world did not stop, it took n

27、o 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 brak

28、es. 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 workera theology student named Tonywho helped him in and out of t

29、he 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

30、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 for more than thirty years. Because of the cane, he took a while to reach the chair. Fin

31、ally, 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

32、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 wit

33、h 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

34、 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.Morries doctors guessed he had two years left

35、. 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 doctors 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

36、 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 wo

37、uld walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip. The fall semester passed quickly. The pills increased. Therapy became a regular routine. Nurses came to his house to work with Morries withering legs, to keep the muscles active, bending them back and forth as if pumping water

38、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

39、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 f

40、illed it.Most of us would be embarrassed by all this, especially at Morries 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

41、 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

42、 visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problemsthe 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

43、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 c

44、olleague 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.“Morrie had a better idea. He made some calls. He chose a date. And on a cold Sun

45、day 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 heartas you move through time, layer on layer

46、, 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 wasnt dead yet.In fact, the most unusual part of his life was about to unfold.The Student At this

47、 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

48、 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 twenti

49、es, 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 mothers brother, the man who had taught me music, taught me to drive, teased me about girls, thrown