Tuesdays with Morrie

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?"

"Yes, you are. I'm very sorry."

And here comes the part that makes this book what it is. Morrie Schwartz walks out of the office and sees a woman calmly dropping coins into a parking meter. People are carrying groceries. The world goes on. And he thinks: shouldn't everything stop?

It did not stop. Here Morrie made the decision that shaped the rest of his life. Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left? He chose the second, and then some. His own dying would be his final research project, a human textbook.