Two old man

There were two elderly people who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ALS is a disease in which the muscles gradually weaken and become paralyzed until, eventually, a person can no longer move independently. At present, there is no cure.

In Los Alamos, New Mexico, a retired professor lived with his wife, a pediatrician. One day, she was diagnosed with ALS. Even though she was a physician herself, she found it difficult to accept that she had an incurable disease. She was gentle, intelligent, and warmhearted, but she had spent her entire life holding herself to exacting standards. For someone like her, accepting a body that would no longer obey her must have been especially painful.

As the disease progressed, she increasingly needed the help of caregivers. Even this was difficult. Meticulous by nature and accustomed to perfection, she was rarely satisfied with anyone who cared for her.

For anyone, living day after day with pain while facing death is enormously difficult. But for a woman who had lived her life with such discipline and accomplishment, the fear and despair may have been even greater. With her husband's devoted care, she endured the illness for ten years before her life finally came to an end.

She did not die the “wrong” way. She was simply a person for whom accepting the reality of death was extraordinarily difficult.

I am deeply moved by the way Professor Morrie faced death. But if my own body began, one part at a time, to stop obeying me, could I really remain as calm as he did? Perhaps I am closer to that woman physician than I am to Morrie.

“Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”
(p. 81)

These words came from Professor Morrie Schwartz, who also suffered from ALS. Brandeis University, where he taught, made every accommodation possible so that he could continue teaching after he became ill.

As his legs weakened until he could no longer walk, and even chewing and eating became increasingly difficult, Morrie made a decision: he would refuse to spend the rest of his life drowning in self-pity. He would live the remaining days of his life as he wished—with dignity, courage, and humor.

He carefully planned how he would bring his life to a close. In conversations with his former student Mitch Albom, who later became a well-known author, Morrie described how he dealt with his sorrow.

When grief came over him, he allowed himself to cry for a while. Then he would place his hand on a weakening part of his body and say goodbye: “Thank you for all you have done. Goodbye.” Stroking his legs, he would remember all the wonderful places they had carried him. After crying, he would stop, remember the joyful moments of his life, and gradually a sense of peace and gratitude would return.

The woman physician could not let go. Morrie, however, said goodbye one piece at a time.

For someone who has tried to live perfectly, the failure of the body may mean more than simply losing one's health. It may feel as though the self one has spent a lifetime building is collapsing.

Morrie, on the other hand, lost the functions of his body one after another, but he did not regard those losses as the loss of himself.

People go shopping at the market. They visit parks and beaches. Morrie could no longer do those things. Instead, he sat by the window in his weakened body and looked outside at the sunlight, the trees, and the leaves moving in the breeze. Because he could still see them before he died, he felt not merely grateful, but ten times, a hundred times more grateful.

He lived for five years after his diagnosis, and until the final moments of his life, he remained grateful, smiling, and at peace.

Perhaps what reveals itself before death is not merely our personality.

Perhaps, at the end, we discover what we have held on to throughout our lives—and what we have believed to be our very self.

Whenever I think of death, there is one memory I can never put aside: the death of my mother-in-law twenty-five years ago.

Throughout her life, she disliked being dependent on others or becoming a burden, even to her own children. She died peacefully, with a smile, only a week after entering the hospital. After the funeral, when we added up all the expenses, the total came to $900.

A few days later, my wife and I were sorting through her belongings. We opened her old, well-worn Bible.

Between its pages, we found some money.

We counted it.

Exactly $900.

My wife and I sat there for a long time without saying a word.

During the past ten years of living in this retirement community, I have witnessed the deaths of a number of people close to me. Each time, I have been struck by something: strangely enough, the way a person dies often seems to resemble the way that person has lived.

The woman who had tried to live perfectly found it difficult to let go, even at the end.

The man who learned to give thanks and say goodbye, one thing at a time, was able eventually to say goodbye even to life itself.

And my mother-in-law, who had spent her life trying never to burden others, had quietly prepared even the cost of her own funeral.

And so, these days, I often find myself wondering:

When we die, do we really become someone different? Or do we simply walk the final stretch of the road as the person we have been becoming all our lives?

If that is so, perhaps preparing well for death is not really about learning how to die.

Perhaps it is about learning how to live today.

Reference

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, New York.