HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

Published by Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group; Random House Inc. in 1997


Second 1/3 of the book - Pgs. 61 - 129

Precis of "The Professor, Part Two" (Pgs. 109 - 113):
 

Morrie used to work at a mental hospital doing research, observing the patients there and recording their treatments. He got to know and understand some of the patients there, an decided that most of them felt ignored in their lives, and missed compassion. When Morrie was teaching at Brandeis in the sixties, he and his fellow professors were very involved in the changes taking place at the time, going to protest marches in Washington with their students, and holding class discussions. Many students might not take Morrie's classes seriously today, but he had many students visit him, saying they had never had another teacher quite like him.



 Quotes: 


Pg. 91 : "It was the first week in September, back-to-school week, and after thirty-five consecutive autumns, my old professor did not have a class waiting for him on a college campus. Boston was teeming with students, double-parked on side streets, unloading trunks. And here was Morrie in his study. It seemed wrong, like those football players who finally retire and have to face that first Sunday at home, watching on TV, thinking I could still do that." - Mitch


Response: It seems like he's trying to say people regret that they couldn't do more. This seems to be true in the case of a football player, because that seems to be a profession where once you stop playing, it's over. However, Morrie never really stopped teaching, as he seemed to teach things to everyone he spoke with.


Pg. 108 :    MITCH : Do you believe in reincarnation?
                MORRIE : Perhaps.
                   MITCH : What would you come back as?
                MORRIE : If I had my choice, a gazelle. 
                   MITCH : A gazelle?
                MORRIE : Yes. So graceful, so fast.
                   MITCH : A gazelle?
                MORRIE : You think that's strange?
                   MITCH : No. I don't think that's strange at all.



 Pg. 110 : "I'm so lucky to be here, because my husband is so rich he can afford it. Could you imagine if I had to be in one of those cheap mental hospitals?" - Woman at Chestnut Lodge


Response: She's saying that she wouldn't be able to stay where she is staying if she had less money, which was brought up in sicko - how people can't afford to pay their medical bills. However, this was before Nixon passed the HMO law in 1973. If this woman needed to go to a mental hospital today, she would probably just be glad to be in one, regardless of whether it was "cheap" or not. 

Pg. 120 : "The truth is, part of me is every age. I'm a three-year-old, I'm a five-year-old, I'm a thirty-seven year old, I'm a fifty-year-old. I've been through all of them, and I know what it's like. I delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. Do you understand? How can I be envious of where you are - when I've been there myself?" - Morrie


Response: This reminds me of a story where this girl is talking about her eleventh birthday. She says how people are like those Russian dolls, the ones where you open them and find a smaller one, and they all fit inside each other. She says that she is eleven, but she is also three and eight and five and every age, up to eleven.

Thoughts and experiences in relation to this book's portrayal (in the first 1/3rd) of how people go about being sick and dying: 


Morrie and Mitch talk about Lou Gehrig, since he also had ALS. Morrie doesn't seem to like what Lou Gehrig said, saying he wouldn't call himself lucky. However, he seems to have a lot of the same ideas that Lou Gehrig did - that it's the people around you who matter, that having people who love you is the best part of life. This is part of the "luckiest man" speech: 


"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I’m lucky.


When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that’s the finest I know. So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for."