Morrie might have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have. I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my own life. I was busy.
Before newborns open their eyes, we circle them, appearing as brilliant colors, and when they clench their tiny hands for the first time, they are actually grabbing the colors they find most appealing.
What do you do when you lose a loved one too quickly? When you have no time to prepare before, suddenly, that soul is gone?
I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life. On the people who are coming to see me. On the stories that I’m going to hear. On you, if it’s Tuesday. Because we’re Tuesday people.
There is life after this life.
The Blue Man held out his hand. “Fairness,” he said, “does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.
We’re Tuesday people,” he said. Tuesday people, I repeated. Morrie smiled.
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.
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.
Don’t lose yourself... inside yourself...
A child is both an anchor and a set of wings. My old way of doing things was gone.
Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.” He squeezed my hand gently. I squeezed back harder. And like that carnival contest where you bang a hammer and watch the disk rise up the pole, I could almost see my body heat rise up Morrie’s chest and neck into his cheeks and eyes. He smiled.
Catholic ritual of Sancta Missa: “ ‘Come in haste to assist them, you saints of God. Come in haste to meet them, you angels of the Lord. Enfold in your arms these souls, and take your burden heavenward to the most high.
I hope that one day you will think of me as your friend.
Did God answer you? He smiled. “Still waiting,” he said.
He was never haunted by “Why am I here?” He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honor the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with “Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me.
Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?
Morrie closed his eyes to absorb the notes. As my wife’s loving voice filled the room, a crescent smile appeared 0n his face. And while his body was stiff as a sandbag, you could almost see him dancing inside it.
It’s a quiet theft, how time lures people away.
His eyes were more sunken than I remembered them, and his cheekbones more pronounced. This gave him a harsher, older look – until he smiled, of course, and the sagging cheeks gathered up like curtains.