A Professor’s Final Class

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

       

  “I went to a friend’s funeral this week,” says Morrie. Mitch Albom’s college Professor Morrie Schwartz who lies dying of Lou Gehrig’s Disease, (ALS). ”It was sad. People said all these wonderful things about him and he wasn’t there to hear them.” Then Morrie tells Mitch that he’s going to hold his own funeral while he’s alive so he can hear the nice things people say about him. “I want to know what legacy I am leaving…how my life is perceived.”

            I couldn’t help but wonder when I read that portion of Albom’s book what people would say about me at my funeral. Would my life matter? What message did I want to leave behind?

            Listening to my car radio, I heard about Oprah Winfrey saying something that really touched me. “I’ve interviewed thousands of people and they all want the same thing: to be seen, to be heard, and to know that their words matter.”

            I think that’s what Morrie was after…knowing that his words mattered…that he mattered. It certainly mattered to Albom because his relationship with Morrie changed his life. He visited his old professor every Tuesday for a year to take a course called The Meaning of Life which Morrie taught from his own experience.  Mitch was the only student.

            Albom explains, “No grades were given, but there were oral exams each week. I was expected to respond to questions, and to pose questions of my own. I also performed physical tasks now and then, such as lifting the professor’s head to a comfortable spot on the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Kissing him good-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.” 

            Morrie Schwartz taught at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts for over 30 years. My husband and I both studied there. Neither of us was lucky enough to have Morrie as a professor. Tales of his adventures have a special place in the legacy of campus stories. But Morrie’s stories were unique. A joyous, engaging person, he loved to dance at a club in Harvard Square on Friday nights. Sometimes with a partner and sometimes without one. It didn’t matter to Morrie.  He wrote several texts and said outrageous things. He also developed personal relationships with his students, especially Albom who wrote, "He looked like a cross between a biblical prophet and a Christmas elf. When he smiled it’s as if you’d just told him the first joke on earth.”

            Last week, my husband and I visited a local funeral home to make plans for our passing. I laughed at the ridiculousness of being cremated in a cardboard container tied with string. At worrying about the view from our burial plots, and the bargain price if you agreed to being stacked, one on top of the other in a ‘columbarium’. Why did we care? But we did—a place for our kids to visit. And possibly, like Mitch and Morrie did after his passing. They talked about life and their hopes, and dreams. Mitch did most of the talking.

We both wanted a marker to say that we’d been here. But what will really matter about our lives? Will what we’ve done to make a difference? How will our legacy be written? Will our lives be included in the collection of meaningful family stories? Will the things that matter to us matter to them?

            Reading the last page of Tuesdays with Morrie once more, I remembered Morrie asking, “Have you been fully human?”

            “Have I told you about the tension of opposites?” asks Morrie.

            “Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.

            “A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.”

            “Sounds like a wrestling match,” says Mitch.

             “A wrestling match, yes, you could describe life that way,” he said.      

             “So which side wins,” Mitch asks?

“Which side wins?” He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth.

            “Love wins.  Love always wins.”