Illness & Dying Book Part 1

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie, Random House, 1997

Tuesdays with Morrie, is a non-fictional story of an elderly college professor named Morrie Schwartz who's dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. The narrator of the story Mitch Albom was Morrie's former student, who sees Morrie as his mentor, and through out the book, Mitch and Morries relationship was from a teacher mentoring a younger person to becoming good friends with an age gap. In the beginning of the story Morrie asked many common questions when he found out that he had ALS “Why is this happening to me?” or when he left the doctors office and so people going on with their lives he asked “How come no one knows what’s going on with me?” and than right after he said “I guess it doesn’t mater if I die, either way life goes on” I found that significant, because I always wondered what I’d say if I were in that situation, an he basically said it, but I also was surprised how within that moment he found out he was dying, he came to the conclusion and obvious answer that life does go on, even if your life is coming to an end.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a perfect book for this unit because it covers everything we’ve been talking about in class, from young person learning and becoming friends with someone who’s older than them and sees them as a mentor to learn from. The emotional effects of illness and death, how others treat those who are ill or who are ill feel, and the thoughts they think of when they have an exact amount of time to live. This unit and book has given me some new ways to look at illness and dying, for instance everyone who is dying from an illness, they look at things a few ways, deal with it and go on with their lives or mope about it and wait. In Tuesdays with Morrie at first Morrie seemed like he was going to sit and wait, but tried to do things even though he was becoming more and more immobile.

The thing about illness and death is that they don't discriminate, it affects everything and everyone, your pets, your loved ones, yourself, either way everyone has different experiences that are similar. Whether it's watching a love one dying in front of you, or not knowing someone who's died, people die all the time, and just like Morrie said "Life goes on". And who knows if death is good or bad, but without death, their wouldn't be any balance.