The Fourth Tuesday We Talk About Death

(excerpt from Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom)

"Let's begin with this idea," Morrie said. "Everyone knows they're going to die, but
nobody believes it." He was in a businesslike mood this Tuesday. The subject was
death, the first item on my list. Before I arrived, Morrie had scribbled a few notes on
small white pieces of paper so that he wouldn't forget. His shaky handwriting was
now indecipherable to everyone but him. It was almost Labor Day, and through the
office window I could see the spinach-colored hedges of the backyard and hear the
yells of children playing down the street, their last week of freedom before school
began.
Back in Detroit, the newspaper strikers were gearing up for a huge holiday
demonstration, to show the solidarity of unions against management. On the plane
ride in, I had read about a woman who had shot her husband and two daughters as
they lay sleeping, claiming she was protecting them from "the bad people." In
California, the lawyers in the O. J. Simpson trial were becoming huge celebrities.
Here in Morrie's office, life went on one precious day at a time. Now we sat together,
a few feet from the newest addition to the house: an oxygen machine. It was small
and portable, about knee-high. On some nights, when he couldn't get enough air to
swallow, Morrie attached the long plastic tubing to his nose, clamping on his nostrils
like a leech. I hated the idea of Morrie connected to a machine of any kind, and I
tried not to look at it as Morrie spoke.
"Everyone knows they're going to die," he said again, "but nobody believes it. If we
did, we would do things differently."
So we kid ourselves about death, I said.
"Yes. But there's a better approach. To know you're going to die, and to be prepared
for it at any time. That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your
life while you're living."
How can you ever be prepared to die?
"Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks,
`Is today the day? Am Iready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person
Iwant to be?' "
He turned his head to his shoulder as if the bird were there now.
"Is today the day I die?" he said.
Morrie borrowed freely from all religions. He was born Jewish, but became an
agnostic when he was a teenager, partly because of all that had happened to him
as a child. He enjoyed some of the philosophies of Buddhism and Christianity, and

he still felt at home, culturally, in Judaism. He was a religious mutt, which made him
even more open to the students he taught over the years.And the things he was
saying in his final months on earth seemed to transcend all religious differences.
Death has a way of doing that.
"The truth is, Mitch," he said, "once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."
I nodded.
"I'm going to say it again," he said. "Once you learn how to die, you learn how to
live." He smiled, and Irealized what he was doing. He was making sure I absorbed
this point, without embarrassing me by asking. It was part of what made him a good
teacher.
Did you think much about death before you got sick, I asked.
"No." Morrie smiled. "Iwas like everyone else. I once told a friend of mine, in a
moment of exuberance, `I'm gonna be the healthiest old man you ever met!'
" How old were you?
"In my sixties."
So you were optimistic.
"Why not? Like I said, no one really believes they're going to die."
But everyone knows someone who has died, I said. Why is it so hard to think about
dying?
"Because," Morrie continued, "most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking.
We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things
we automatically think we have to do."
And facing death changes all that?
"Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you
realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.
He sighed. "Learn how to die, and you learn how to live."
I noticed that he quivered now when he moved his hands. His glasses hung around
his neck, and when he lifted them to his eyes, they slid around his temples, as if he
were trying to put them on someone else in the dark. Ireached over to help guide
them onto his ears.
"Thank you," Morrie whispered. He smiled when my hand brushed up against his
head. The slightest human contact was immediate joy.

"Mitch. Can I tell you something?" Of course, I said.

"You might not like it." Why not?
"Well, the truth is, if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder, if you accept that
you can die at any timethen you might not be as ambitious as you are."
I forced a small grin.
"The things you spend so much time on-all this work you do-might not seem as
important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things."
Spiritual things?
"You hate that word, don't you? `Spiritual.' You think it's touchy-feely stuff."
Well, I said.
He tried to wink, a bad try, and I broke down and laughed.
"Mitch," he said, laughing along, "even I don't know what `spiritual development'
really means. But I do know we're deficient in some way. We are too involved in
materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the
universe around us, we take these things for granted."
He nodded toward the window with the sunshine streaming in. "You see that? You
can go out there, outside, anytime. You can run up and down the block and go crazy.
I can't do that. I can't go out. I can't run. I can't be out there without fear of getting
sick. But you know what? I appreciate that window more
than you do."
Appreciate it?
"Yes. I look out that window every day. I notice the change in the trees, how strong
the wind is blowing. It's as if I can see time actually passing through that
windowpane. Because I know my time is almost done, I am drawn to nature like I'm
seeing it for the first time."
He stopped, and for a moment we both just looked out the window. I tried to see
what he saw. I tried to see time and seasons, my life passing in slow motion. Morrie
dropped his head slightly and curled it toward his shoulder.
"Is it today, little bird?" he asked. "Is it today?"