Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom ★★★★★

Deep and impactful

Non Fiction – Biography – Memoir

191 pages

Publication Date: January 1st 1997

“Let’s begin with this idea,” Morrie said.  “everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it.”

Morrie Schwartz’s spent his life as a teacher, a professor.  When facing his end from Lou Gehrig’s disease, he had one more course to teach to former student Mitch Albom.  With his finally months and the ever in encroaching end he would teach Mitch how to live.

This book has an interesting format and a smooth, graceful writing style.  Short, but impactful.  Just as a FYI this will be the end of my typical review style and from here I proceed into more personal and previously uncharted waters.

I have read this book before, but either from lack of understanding or experience or perhaps something altogether different it really hit me this time in way it didn’t before.  I could look past my philosophical differences with Morrie and really understand the importance of this story. Maybe this is the type of book you have to be ready to receive.

I have seen death up close, both as a child and an adult.  I have experienced the aftermath of sudden death; the suffering and pain of letting go, to the remembering what endures of the person after they have left us.  I have seen wasting death, where an individual and those around them die a little bit each day, until it finally ends.  I have been in the presence of profound grace and acceptance of people facing their end, which I can only wonder at.  What I have learned from all of this is life here on earth is a finite thing and I find comfort in that.  Whatever our beliefs this is something all of us will have to deal with at some point as part of the human experience. 

Sometimes a book is not only important for what it says, but also for how it affects us.  Tuesdays with Morrie reminds me to think on these issues.  In amidst my “busy living” and focusing on things of small importance in the long run, I need to remember life is finite and make the important decisions accordingly.

ISBN-13: 978-0767905923