Tuesdays with Morrie:
an old man, a young man, and
life's greatest lesson
By

Mitch Albom


Courtesy:

Shahid Riaz
Islamabad ­ Pakistan

shahid.riaz@gmail.com
 "Tuesdays with Morrie" By Mitch Albom 2
Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the enormous help given to me in creating this book. For
their memories, their patience, and their guidance, I wish to thank Charlotte, Rob, and
Jonathan Schwartz, Maurie Stein, Charlie Derber, Gordie Fellman, David Schwartz,
Rabbi Al Axelrad, and the multitude of Morrie's friends and colleagues. Also, special
thanks to Bill Thomas, my editor, for handling this project with just the right touch. And,
as always, my appreciation to David Black, who often believes in me more than I do
myself.
Mostly, my thanks to Morrie, for wanting to do this last thesis together. Have you ever
had a teacher like this?

The Curriculum

The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a
window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves.
The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of
Life. It was taught from experience.
No grades were given, but there were oral exams each week. You were expected to
respond to questions, and you were expected to pose questions of your own. You were
also required to perform physical tasks now and then, such as lifting the professor's
head to a comfortable spot on the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
Kissing him good-bye earned you extra credit.
No books were required, yet many topics were covered, including love, work,
community, family, aging, forgiveness, and, finally, death. The last lecture was brief,
only a few words.
A funeral was held in lieu of graduation.
Although no final exam was given, you were expected to produce one long paper on
what was learned. That paper is presented here.
The last class of my old professor's life had only one student.
I was the student.

It is the late spring of 1979, a hot, sticky Saturday afternoon. Hundreds of us sit
together, side by side, in rows of wooden folding chairs on the main campus lawn. We
wear blue nylon robes. We listen impatiently to long speeches. When the ceremony is
over, we throw our caps in the air, and we are officially graduated from college, the
senior class of Brandeis University in the city of Waltham, Massachusetts. For many of
us, the curtain has just come down on childhood.

Afterward, I find Morrie Schwartz, my favorite professor, and introduce him to my
parents. He is a small man who takes small steps, as if a strong wind could, at any time,
whisk him up into the clouds. In his graduation day robe, he looks like a cross between a
biblical prophet and a Christmas elf He has sparkling blue green eyes, thinning silver
hair that spills onto his forehead, big ears, a triangular nose, and tufts of graying
eyebrows. Although his teeth are crooked and his lower ones are slanted back--as if
someone had once punched them in--when he smiles it's as if you'd just told him the
first joke on earth.
He tells my parents how I took every class he taught. He tells them, "You have a
special boy here. "Embarrassed, I look at my feet. Before we leave, I hand my professor
a present, a tan briefcase with his initials on the front. I bought this the day before at a
shopping mall. I didn't want to forget him. Maybe I didn't want him to forget me.
"Mitch, you are one of the good ones," he says, admiring the briefcase. Then he hugs
me. I feel his thin arms around my back. I am taller than he is, and when he holds me, I
feel awkward, older, as if I were the parent and he were the child. He asks if I will stay in
 "Tuesdays with Morrie" By Mitch Albom 3
touch, and without hesitation I say, "Of course."
When he steps back, I see that he is crying.

The Syllabus

His death sentence came in the summer of 1994. Looking back, Morrie knew
something bad was coming long before that. He knew it the day he gave up dancing.
He had always been a dancer, my old professor. The music didn't matter. Rock and
roll, big band, the blues. He loved them all. He would close his eyes and with a blissful