The First Tuesday: We Talk About the World
... opened the door and let me in.
“I got you something,” I announced, holding up a brown paper bag. I had stopped on my way from the airport at a nearby supermarket and purchased some turkey, potato salad, macaroni salad, and bagels. I knew there was plenty of food at the house, but I wanted to contribute something.
We sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by wicker chairs. This time, without the need to make up sixteen years of information, we slid quickly into the familiar waters of our old college dialogue, Morrie asking questions, listening to my replies, stopping like a chef to sprinkle in something I’d forgotten or hadn’t realized. He asked about the newspaper strike, and true to form, he couldn’t understand why both sides didn’t simply communicate with each other and solve their problems. I told him not everyone was as smart as he was.
So, I said, in a reflexively cynical response, I guess the key to finding the meaning of life is to stop taking out the garbage? He laughed, and I was relieved that he did. We laughed because he used to say the same thing nearly twenty years earlier.
Mostly on Tuesdays. In fact, Tuesday had always been our day together. Most of my courses with Morrie were on Tuesdays. Right from the start— it was on Tuesdays that we sat together, by his desk, or in the cafeteria, or on the steps of Pearlman Hall, going over the work. So it seemed only fitting that we were back together on a Tuesday, here in the house with the Japanese maple out front.
As I readied to go, I mentioned this to Morrie.
“We’re Tuesday people,” he said. Tuesday people, I repeated. Morrie smiled.
“Mitch, you asked about caring for people I don’t even know. But can I tell you the thing I’m learning most with this disease?” What’s that?
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” His voice dropped to a whisper.
“Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, ‘Love is the only rational act.’” He repeated it carefully, pausing for effect.
“‘Love is the only rational act.’”
I nodded, like a good student, and he exhaled weakly. I leaned over to give him a hug. And then, although it is not really like me, I kissed him on the cheek. I felt his weakened hands on my arms, the thin stubble of his whiskers brushing my face.
“So you’ll come back next Tuesday?” he whispered.
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The Second Tuesday: We Talk About Feeling Sorry for Yourself
I came back the next Tuesday. And for many Tuesdays that followed. I looked forward to these visits more than one would think, considering I was flying seven hundred miles to sit alongside a dying man. But I seemed to slip into a time warp when I visited Morrie, and I liked myself better when I was there. I no longer rented a cellular phone for the rides from the airport. Let them wait , I told myself, mimicking Morrie.
In light of this, my visits with Morrie felt like a cleansing rinse of human kindness. We talked about life and we talked about love. We talked about one of Morrie’s favorite subjects, compassion, and why our society had such a shortage of it. Before my third visit, I stopped at a market called Bread and Circus—I had seen their bags in Morrie’s house and figured he must like the food there—and I loaded up with plastic containers from their fresh food take-away, things like vermicelli with vegetables and carrot soup and baklava.
When I entered Morrie’s study, I lifted the bags as if I’d just robbed a bank.
“Food man!” I bellowed.
Morrie rolled his eyes and smiled. Meanwhile, I looked for signs of the disease’s progression.
Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too—even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.
When I entered Morrie’s study, I lifted the bags as if I’d just robbed a bank.
“Food man!” I bellowed.
Morrie rolled his eyes and smiled. Meanwhile, I looked for signs of the disease’s progression.
Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too—even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.
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The Third: Tuesday We Talk About Regrets
The next Tuesday, I arrived with the normal bags of food-pasta with corn, potato salad, apple cobbler—and something else: a Sony tape recorder. I want to remember what we talk about, I told Morrie. I want to have your voice so I can listen to it … later.
With all the people clamoring for his time, perhaps I was trying to take too much away from these Tuesdays. Listen, I said, picking up the recorder. He stopped me, wagged a finger, then hooked his glasses off his nose, he looked me square in the eye.
“Mitch,” he continued, softly now.
“You don’t understand. I want to tell you about my life. I want to tell you before I can’t tell you anymore.” His voice dropped to a whisper.
“I want someone to hear my story. Will you?”
I nodded. We sat quietly for a moment.
“So,” he said, “is it turned on?”
Now, the truth is, that tape recorder was more than nostalgia. I was losing Morrie. And I suppose tapes, like photographs and videos, are a desperate attempt to steal something from death’s suitcase.
But it was also becoming clear to me –through his courage, his humor, his patience, and his openness—that Morrie was looking at life from some very different place than anyone else I knew. A healthier place. A more sensible place.
If some mystical clarity of thought came when you looked death in the eye, then I knew Morrie wanted to share it. And I wanted to remember it for as long as I could.
Text from “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom.
