Hw 22 - Illness & Dying Part 1

Tuesdays With Morrie
Mitch Albom
Published by Doubleday
Year of Publishing: 1997

During the chapter, "The Classroom", Mitch comes to the realization that his old professor, Morrie is an overnight media magnet. After the infamous "Nightline" interview that Morrie was the subject in, he was the target for many other interviewers and took the interest of many people after his diagnosis of ALS. Mitch criticizes himself as a man who is in want of nothing more than money and power, his values weren't as deep as Morrie.

(Pages 32-33) - Morrie said, "People see me as a bridge. I'm not as alive as I used to be, but I'm not yet dead. I'm sort of . . . in -  between."  This quote demonstrates that Morrie feels as if he can't be alive since he is soon to die, but not dead since he is still grasping on to life.

(Page 38) - Mitch said, "I promised I would, and I tried not to think about the last time I promised this."
Mitch said this after Morrie told him to visit him again, Mitch knows that he had let Morrie down once before already and has remorse for it. Mitch knows the type of person he is now, yet doesn't seem to necessarily be proud of it.

(Page 61) - Morrie said, "Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel."
This quote can be changed to an overarching theme. Applying this quote to Mitch, you can say that Mitch initially looked at Morrie as an old man dying and withering in to nothing, and suffering the entire time. However it is not until Mitch spends more time around Morrie, that he realizes that Morrie is not thinking about what he sees in the mirror, but more of what he feels inside.

The way that Tuesdays With Morrie portrays illness and dying, is through positivity. Morrie doesn't emotionally wither up and quit during his last months of life, instead he chooses to spread his insight and thoughts for the end of his life. This is pretty similar to how my family has handled illness before death. A very distant relative through marriage, had a lump in her breast found and during the time before they biopsied it, she chose to be much more at peace and giving to others. Both my relative and Morrie used the fear of death to give them much more value for their lives.