"Tell you what. After I'm dead, you talk. And I'll listen." - Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
Tuesdays were their meeting days in college. Outside of Morrie's semester long courses, Mitch would spend every Tuesday they could both manage with his professor. It was their day of private lessons and bonding moments then. Now, nearly twenty years later, it is their day again. As Morrie so eloquently reminds Mitch in one of his several weekly visits, they are Tuesday people.
Have you ever had one of those mentors in your life - a friend, a grandparent, a teacher, or maybe even a colleague- who touched your life in a way that you could never imagine possible or begin to summarize? They understood you, perhaps when the rest of the world didn't, taught you lessons you could never forget and always tried to give you the best advice they could so that you could see the forest through the trees? For Mitch Albom, this person was his college professor; Morrie Schwartz. Tuesday's with Morrie is about the rekindling of Mitch's relationship with Morrie, twenty some-odd years after loosing touch, during the elder man’s dying days. In his old professor's final days, Mitch finds that he is learning the greatest lessons of all. These lessons aren't those that you can find hidden in a text book or even somewhere in the writings of Shakespeare. They are lessons about life, and, most importantly, what makes it fullest.
Fiction is usually my reading genre, but this non-fiction novel gave me a pleasant surprise. Most people have the misconception that novels in the non-fiction genre are dry, boring and lacking in emotion (even I do!); Tuesdays with Morrie is nothing of that sort. Tuesdays with Morrie is an unconventionally written biography full of soul. Instead of reading a chronological time-line of Morrie’s life from the beginning to the end, Mitch Albom displayed the last leg of Morrie’s life in as much of a personal way as possible. It isn’t necessarily about Morrie’s life, or death, as it is about the gifts he gave to the world that made him so spectacular; his lessons in particular. The novel, itself, is one long lesson; the last thesis. The lessons from Morrie, tucked inside Albom’s novel, are insightful and thought provoking. He was a remarkable man filled with enlightenment and depth.
Admirably, Albom often admitted faults of his own character in the pages of Tuesdays with Morrie, proving a strong sense of self. It takes effort to broadcast your faults to a mass amount of people. He portrays himself as a young man absorbed in his work and caught up in the detached moral fibers of society. Morrie is a man who loves to live life to the fullest forced to change his entire life because of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). He is a dancer, a teacher and a kid at heart but ALS tries it’s hardest to rip that all away from him. There is, though, one other thing he is; an optimistic fighter.
Mitch Albom has a way of relaying Morrie's words so that we not only connect to the prophetic words that are spoken, but to the man behind the words as well. By the time the last page of the novel is turned, you feel like you knew Morrie and, if you are anything like me, his words will have touched you beyond compare. Even as I flipped over that last page and closed the hard cover, my eyes were red with tears and my pillow soaked. I cannot say the tears were solely out of sorrow, although they partially were (as the world "loosing" such a loving soul as Morrie seemed so horrible), because even until the final pages I found myself smiling. Morrie's personality and Mitch's portrayal of his old teacher keeps the novel lighthearted, even in the most gut wrenching scenes. After all, as Morrie so eloquently put it, he wasn't dying, he was just becoming part of the ocean that is humanity; death isn't permanent, so long as there are those that love you to carry on your memory.
So, grab a box of tissues, curl up in your favorite spot and open this heart warming novel. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself learning right alongside Mitch as his favorite professor gives his final lessons on living.
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Mitch Albom, originally a sports journalist, is a critically acclaimed author well known for his novel The Five People You Meet in Heaven. He is also the author of three other non-sports related novels, including Tuesdays with Morrie.
If you are interested in learning more about Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie or his other writings, you can visit http://mitchalbom.com/home/ , his official website.