It has been ten years since this book was published, and on the occasion of that anniversary, I have been asked to add a few reflections. That is no small task. The book changed my life and, if I am to believe readers around the world, changed others as well. Where do I begin?
Perhaps with an incident that I didn’t include in the original manuscript. I meant to. But for some reason, I left it out. So here it is, all these years later:
When I first phoned Morrie Schwartz, my old professor, who at this point was in the terrible grip of ALS, I felt I needed to re-introduce myself. After all, it had been 16 years since we had spoken. Would he even remember my name? Back in college, I used to call Morrie “Coach.” Who knows why? A sports thing even then, I guess. Hi, Coach. How you doing, Coach?
Anyhow, that day on the phone, when I heard him say “Hello”, I swallowed and said, “Morrie, my name is Mitch Albom, I was a student of yours in the 1970’s. I don’t know if you remember me.”
And this is the first thing he said:
“How come you didn’t call me Coach?”
My journey began with that sentence. It took me through that phone call, through my first guilt-laden visit to West Newton, through all the Tuesday visits that followed, through Morrie’s slow agonizing decay and his quiet, dignified death. It took me through his funeral, through my private mourning, through the days in my basement writing the pages you have here, through the small initial printing of this book and through the unexpected 200 printings that have followed. It took me through this country, through many other countries, through seeing this book taught in schools or read at weddings and funerals. It took me through thousands upon thousands of letters and emails and comments and teary hugs from strangers, all of which could be summed up the same way:
Your story moved us.
But it was not my story.
It was Morrie’s story, Morrie’s invitation. Morrie’s last class. I was the invited party. How come you didn’t call me coach?
I forgot. He remembered.
And that was the difference between us.
Morrie has changed me in that way. I remember everything now. How can I not? I am asked about my old professor almost every day of my life, and I often joke that this book is his revenge for my ignoring him for all those years. I am now his eternal graduate student, coming back every fall, spring and summer for the same class, over and over.
That’s OK. I always felt Morrie had something to teach. I felt it thirty years ago when he had sideburns and wore yellow turtlenecks and gestured wildly with his hands in front of a classroom, and I felt it years later after the awful disease left him frail and motionless on a lounge chair in his home, his voice a whisper, his body so weak I needed to turn his head just so he could see me.
Then, as before, he was wise and loving. And he proved, as he once hoped he would be, a teacher to the end.
As proof, when I began thinking about this afterword, I went back to my notes from our conversations together. I had transcribed all the tapes and organized them into subjects. As I meandered through, hearing Morrie’s voice again, I wondered if I would happen upon something that rung a new chime, something I could share here that made fresh sense given all that has happened.
And I came upon this subject: “Life after death.”
Now, Morrie, by his own admission, had been an agnostic for many years. But after his diagnosis of ALS, he began to explore. To rethink. He delved into religious teachings.
On a Tuesday in August of 1995, according to my notes, we spoke about this. Morrie told me he once believed death was cold and final. “You go in the ground and that’s it.”
But now he felt differently.
What is your concept now, I asked?
“I have not settled on one yet…” he said, honest as always. “However, this is too harmonious, grand and overwhelming a universe to believe that it’s all an accident.”
What a thing for a one-time agnostic to say. Too harmonious, grand and overwhelming universe to believe that it’s all an accident? This, remember, was when Morrie’s body was an empty husk, when he needed to washed and groomed, when he needed his nose blown and his bottom wiped. Harmonious? Grand? If he could find the world’s majesty from such a decayed and difficult posture, how hard can it be for the rest of us?
People often ask what I miss about Morrie. I miss that belief in humanity. I miss the eyes that could view life so encouragingly. And I miss his laugh. I really do. The same day Morrie spoke of life after death, he shared his reincarnation wish, that if he could come back as anything, he’d like to be a gazelle. In re-reading the transcripts, I see that I made a wisecrack after he said that:
“The good news is you’d be reincarnated.” I said. “The bad news is you’d be in the desert somewhere.”
And he said, “Right.” And he cracked up.
We laughed a lot that way. Maybe it’s hard to believe, with death hovering in the corner, but we did. Nobody liked to laugh more than Morrie. Nobody could milk a corny joke longer. I’m telling you, there were days where I could do a “knock knock” joke and he’d go to pieces.
So I miss that. And his patience. And his academic references. And his love of food. And the way he closed his eyes when he listened to music.
Still, what I miss most, simple and maybe selfish as it sounds, is the twinkle in Morrie’s eyes when I came in the room. But when someone is happy – genuinely happy – to see you, it melts you from the start. It is like going home. Those Tuesdays when I entered his study with the hibiscus plant by the window, whatever I dragged in with me, whatever personal drama, work issues, burdensome thoughts, they were washed away when Morrie greeted me, because he truly wanted to be with me. His eyes crinkled and his ears pulled up and his mouth made that funny, crooked-tooth smile and I was welcome. Others have told me they felt the same way with Morrie. Perhaps his ravaging disease stripped him of distractions, erased our self-absorption of daily details, allowed him to be “fully present.” Perhaps he just cherished his time more. I don’t know.
All I know is those Tuesdays we spent together felt like one long hug from a man who couldn’t move his arms. I miss that most of all.
In the ten years since this book was published, I have been asked countless times if I expected it to become so widely-read. My answer is usually a head shake, a smile and a “Not in a million years.” The truth is, the book initially had a hard time finding a home – numerous publishers were uninterested in it; one even told me I had no idea what was a memoir was. Under other circumstances, I might have given up on the idea.
The reason I did not, and the reason I believe the book found a place in people’s hearts, was because I wasn’t trying to write a popular book. I was trying to help Morrie pay his medical bills. As such, I was more dogged and less deterred. I kept going until I found a publisher. And when I told Morrie that I had – and that we could pay his bills – he cried.
I often say for me that was the end of “Tuesdays With Morrie” even though I had barely begun writing it. I had done what I wanted – one small act of kindness in return for the countless acts he had shown me. But the journey, in truth, had hardly started.
Since then, the book has been published in dozens of countries I have never visited, translated into numerous languages I cannot read or speak. It was adapted into a TV movie and the great Jack Lemmon told me playing Morrie was his favorite role. A stage play was written and performed in theaters across the continent. School systems, universities, funeral homes, hospices, churches, synagogues, book groups and charities have embraced the book.
I can never put into words how humbled I am by all this, and how proud I am for Morrie that his gentle wisdom is settling like a snowfall on various streets around the world. It certainly has made me agree with his sentiment: that the universe is indeed too grand and harmonious to believe it’s all an accident.
So I hope this book keeps opening eyes about ALS, until we wipe out the disease. And I hope this book keeps reminding people how precious our time is with one another. And I hope it always celebrates teachers, our most precious resource. And I hope, wherever Morrie is now, he is dancing. Because he deserves to do that again.
When I asked him on that day for a perfect afterlife scenario, this is what he chose:
“That my consciousness goes on…That I’m part of the universe.”
I think about all the people who have read this book, and all those who still will, and I believe, with enormous gratitude, that Morrie’s wish came true.
Mitch Albom
July, 2007