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Tuesdays with Morrie
What It’s About
A dying man who lives far more fully than most people ever do. Morrie teaches what we all avoid: facing death honestly and directly. In fourteen consecutive Tuesdays, you discover that mortality doesn't diminish life's meaning. Instead, it clarifies exactly what matters. You learn what's truly worth living for, and that love is what keeps you alive, even after you're gone.
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Tuesdays with Morrie: Summary
There is an image here that is hard to shake off. A sociology professor in his seventies dancing in the hall of a church off Harvard Square. Alone, in the middle of the floor. He does the lindy to Jimi Hendrix, then tangos to a tape from home. Sweat runs down his back. Nobody there suspects this man stands at a university lectern on weekdays. He is just some old nut who moves as if dancing were the most natural thing in the world.
Then one summer his body starts to quit on him. First the asthma. Then a choking fit by the Charles River, where they inject him with adrenaline. He stumbles at a birthday party, falls down the steps of a theater. The doctors blame old age. Then come the tests: blood, urine, a scope up his rear end, a muscle biopsy from his calf, and a nerve test that zaps him with electrical current, an electric chair of sorts.
In August 1994 the diagnosis arrives. ALS. The nerves shut down one by one, the muscles waste away, and the mind stays awake and watches it all. There is no known cure.
"So I'm going to die?"
