Death and Dying Term Paper

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Tuesdays With Morrie

People react in unpredictable ways to death. If someone we love dies suddenly in an accident, we know what to do. We have to arrange for burial and mourn our loved one. But many people do not die suddenly. They get sick, go to the doctor, find out they have a fatal or potentially fatal disease, and often live for some time after that diagnosis. People aren't always as clear about what they should do or how they should behave under such circumstances, and the person who is dying has to find his or her way through a complex situation. People in such a situation have time to evaluate their lives and come to grips with their fates.

The book Tuesdays with Morrie: an Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, by Mitch Albom, tells the story of Albom's visits with his former professor friend and mentor Morrie Schwartz. Albom meets with Morrie every Tuesday in the last months before Morrie died, rekindling an old relationship and learning important lessons from his old friend in the process. While it is often a cliche that people suddenly develop great wisdom when they know they are dying, Morrie has the emotional strength and intellectual capacity to share his insights with Albom, enriching Albom's life even as Morrie's life comes to an end.

Morrie did not let Albom provide meaningless chit-chat and banter. He maintained his mentor relationship with Albom, challenging him with tough questions and insisting that Morrie come up with questions himself. In this way, Morrie demonstrated not only the ability to lead his student but to be a student himself, challenging Albom to force Morrie to not flinch from the huge life questions that faced Morrie as he contemplated his impending death.

Morrie's determination to examine his fate unflinchingly took great strength, because Morrie had a devastating diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the disease that killed Lou Gehrig and that has so disabled the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

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The terrible truth of this disease is that it would rob Morrie of all muscle movement while leaving his brain intact. Once Morrie got over the initial shock of the diagnosis, he decided to keep using the one thing ALS could not rob him of: his intellect. In addition he demonstrated great humanity, encouraging those who wanted to help not only to visit with him but to help him explore what it means to die. He looked into the abyss and decided to study it, and if possible to help others understand it as well, instead of shrinking back. As he told Albom the first day Albom came to visit, "I have to look at life uniquely now ... I can't go shopping. I can't take care of the bank accounts, I can't take out the garbage. But I can sit here with my dwindling days and look at what I think is important in life. I have both the time -- and the reason -- to do that." (p. 49-50).

Albom learned from the beginning. He found that Morrie wept when he read the news, wept for the victims in Bosnia and the other tragedies he read about in the paper. Albom noted that as a news reporter he came closer to these stories but felt less grief over them. Perhaps, he thought, death is the "great equalizer" (p. 51), the one thing that joins all humanity.

Morrie tries hard to put his younger friend at ease, even though he understands that Albom will face all these issues himself one day. Albom starts bringing a tape recorder, with the intent of telling Morrie's story after Morrie has died. However, he is embarrassed to be record these intimate conversations until Morrie says, "Mitch ... you don't….....

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