Transcript for:
Lessons on Life from Morrie

tuesdays with mori an old man a young man and life's greatest lesson by mitch albon acknowledgements 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 maury stein charlie dauber gordy fellman david schwartz rabbi alex ellard and the multitude of mori'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 maury 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 goodbye 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 you 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 maury 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 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 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 maury knew something bad was coming long before that he knew at 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 smile begin to move to his own sense of rhythm it wasn't always pretty but then he didn't worry about a partner maury danced by himself he used to go to this church in harvard square every wednesday night for something called dance free they had flashing lights and booming speakers and maury would wander in among the mostly student crowd wearing a white t-shirt and black sweatpants and a towel around his neck and whatever music was playing that's the music to which he danced he'd do the lindy to jimi hendrix he twisted and twirled he waved his arms like a conductor on amphetamines until sweat was dripping down the middle of his back no one there knew he was a prominent doctor of sociology with years of experience as a college professor and several well-respected books they just thought he was some old nut once he brought a tango tape and got them to play it over the speakers then he commandeered the floor shooting back and forth like some hot latin lover when he finished everyone applauded he could have stayed in that moment forever but then the dancing stopped he developed asmr in his sixties his breathing became the board one day he was walking along the charles rivers river and a cold burst of wind left and choking for air he was rushed to the hospital and injected with adrenaline a few years later he began to have trouble walking at a birthday party for a friend he stumbled inexplicably another night he fell down the steps of a theater starting a small crowd of people give him air someone yelled he was in his 70s by this point so they whispered old age and helped him to his feet but mori who was always more in touch with his insides than the rest of us knew something else was wrong this was more than old age he was weary all the time he had trouble sleeping he dreamt he was dying he began to see doctors lots of them they tested his blood they tested his urine they put a scope up his rear end and looked inside his intestines finally when nothing could be found one doctor ordered a muscle biopsy taking a small piece out of mori's calf the lab report came back suggesting a neurological problem and mori was brought in for yet another series of tests in one of those tests he sat in a special seat as they zapped him with electrical current and electric chair of sawsan studded his neurological responses we need to check this further the doctor said looking over his results why maury asked what is it we're not sure your times are slow his times were slow what did that mean finally on a hot humid day in august 1994 maury and his wife charlotte went to the neurologist's office and he asked them to sit before he broke the news mori had a myotrophic lateral sclerosis als als lou gehrig's disease a brutal unforgiving illness of the neurological system there was no known cure how did i get it mori asked nobody knew is it terminal yes so i'm going to die yes you are the doctor said i'm very sorry he sat with mori and charlotte for nearly two hours patiently answering their questions when they left the doctor gave them some information on als little pamphlets as if they were opening a bank account outside the sun was shining and people were going about their business a woman ran to put money in the parking meter another carried groceries charlotte had a million thoughts running through her mind how much time do we have left how will we manage how will we pay the bills my old professor meanwhile was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him shouldn't the world stop don't they know what has happened to me but the world did not stop it took no notice at all and as maury pulled weakly on the car door he felt as if he were dropping into a hole now what he thought as my old professor searched for answers the disease took him over day by day week by week he backed the car out of the garage one morning and could barely push the brakes that was the end of his driving he kept tripping so he purchased a cane that was the end of his walking free he went for his regular swim at the ymca but found he could no longer undress himself so he hired his first home care worker a theology student named tony who helped him in and out of the pool and in and out of his bathing suit in the locker room the other swimmers pretended not to stare they stared anyhow that was the end of his privacy in the fall of 1994 mori came to the hilly brandeis campus to teach his final college course he could have skipped this of course the university would have understood why suffer in front of so many people stay at home get your affairs in order but the idea of quitting did not occur to maury instead he hobbled into the classroom his home for more than 30 years because of the cane he took a while to reach the chair finally he sat down dropped his glasses off his nose and looked out at the young faces who stared back in silence my friends i assume you are all here for the social psychology class i have been teaching this course for 20 years and this is the first time i can say there is a risk in taking it because i have a fatal illness i may not live to finish the semester if you feel this is a problem i understand if you wish to drop the course he smiled and that was the end of his secret als is like a lit candle it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax often it begins with the legs and works its way up you lose control of your thigh muscles so that you cannot support yourself standing you lose control of your trunk muscles so that you cannot sit up straight by the end if you are still alive you are breathing through a tube in a hole in your throat while your soul perfectly awake is imprisoned inside a limp husk perhaps able able to blink or cluck a tongue like something from a science fiction movie the man frozen inside his own flesh this takes no more than five years from the day you contract the disease maury's doctors guessed he had two years left maury knew it was less but my old professor had made a profound decision when he began to construct the day he came out of the doctor's office with a sword hanging over his head do i wither up and disappear or do i make the best of my time left he had asked himself he would not wither he would not be ashamed of dying instead he would make death his final project the center point of his days since everyone was going to die he could be of great value right he could be research a human textbook study me in my slow and patient demise watch what happens to me learn with me maury would walk that final bridge between life and death and narrate the trip the fall semester passed quickly the pills increased therapy became a regular routine nurses came to his house to work with maury's withering legs to keep the muscles active bending them back and forth as if pumping water from a well massage specialists came by once a week to try to suit the constant heavy stiffness he felt he met with meditation teachers and closed his eyes and narrowed his thoughts until his world shrunk down to a single breath in and out in and out one day using his cane he stepped onto the curb and fell over into the street the cane was exchanged for a walker as his body weakened the back and forth to the bathroom became too exhausting so mori began to urinate into a large beaker he had to support himself as he did this meaning someone had to hold the beaker while mori filled it most of us would be embarrassed by all this especially at maury's age but mori was not like most of us when some of his close colleagues would visit he would say to them listen i have to pee would you mind helping are you okay with that often to their own surprise they were in fact he entertained a growing stream of visitors he had discussion groups about dying what it really meant how societies had always been afraid of it without necessarily understanding it he told his friends that if they really wanted to help him they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits phone calls a sharing of their problems their way they had always shared their problems because mori had always been a wonderful listener it's happening to him his voice was strong and inviting and his mind was vibrating with a minion thoughts he was intent on proving that the word dying was not synonymous with useless the new year came and went although he never said it to anyone maury knew this would be the last year of his life he was using a wheelchair now and he was fighting time to say all the things he wanted to say to all the people he loved when a colleague at brandeis died suddenly of a heart attack mori went to his funeral he came home depressed what a waste he said all those people saying all those wonderful things and they've never got to hear any of it mori had a better idea he made some calls he chose a date and on a cold sunday afternoon he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a living funeral each of them spoke and paid tribute to my old professor some cried some laughed one woman read a poem my dear and loving cousin your ageless heart as you move through time layer on layer tender sequoia maury cried and laughed with them and all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love maury said that day his living funeral was a rising success only maury wasn't dead yet in fact the most unusual part of his life was about to unfold student at this point i should explain what had happened to me since that summer day when i last hugged my dear and wise professor and promised to keep in touch i did not keep in touch in fact i lost contact with most of the people i knew in college including my be drinking friends and the first woman i ever woke up with in the morning the years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate who left campus that they headed for new york city ready to offer the world his talent the world i discovered was not all that interested i wandered around my early twenties paying rent and reading classifieds and wondering why the lights were not turning green for me my dream was to be a famous musician i played the piano but after several years of dark empty nightclubs broken promises bands that kept breaking up and producers who seemed excited about everyone but me the dream soured i was failing for the first time in my life at the same time i had my first serious encounter with death my favorite uncle my mother's brother the man who had taught me music taught me to drive teased me about girls thrown me a football that one adult who my targeted as a child and said that's who i want to be when i grow up died of pancreatic cancer at the age of four to four he was a short handsome man with a thick mustache and i was with him for the last year of his life living in an apartment just below his i watched his strong body wither then bloat saw him suffer night after night doubled over at the dinner table pressing on his stomach his eyes shut his mouth contorted in pain the rest of us my aunt his two young sons missed it there silently cleaning the plates averting our eyes it was the most helpless i have ever felt in my life one night in may my uncle and i sat on the balcony of his apartment it was breezy and warm he looked out toward the horizon and said through gritted teeth that he wouldn't be around to see his kids into the next school year he asked if i would look after them i told him not to talk that way he stared at me sadly he died a few weeks later after the funeral my life changed i felt as if time were suddenly precious water going down an open drain and i could not move quickly enough no more playing music at half empty nightclubs no more writing songs in my apartment songs that no one would hear i returned to school i earned a master's degree in journalism and took the first job offered as a sports writer instead of chasing my own fame i wrote about famous athletes chasing theirs i worked for newspapers and freelanced for magazines i worked at a pace that knew no hours no limits i would wake up in the morning brush my teeth and sit down at the typewriter in the same clothes i had slept in my uncle had worked for a corporation and hated it same thing every day and i was determined never to end up like him i bounced around from new york to florida and eventually took a job in detroit as a columnist for the detroit free press the sports appetite in that city was insatiable they had professional teams in football basketball baseball and hockey and it matched my ambition in a few years i was not only penning columns i was writing sports books doing radio shows and appearing regularly on tv spouting my opinions on rich football players and hypocritical college sports programs i was part of the media thunderstorm that now soaks our country i was in demand i stopped renting i started buying i bought a house on a hill i bought cars i invested in stocks and built a portfolio i was cranked to a fifth gear and everything i did i did on a deadline i exercised like a demon i drove my car at breakneck speed i made more money than i had ever figured to see i met a dark-haired woman named janine who somehow loved me despite my schedule and the constant absences we married after a seven-year courtship i was back to work a week after the wedding i told her and myself that we would one day start a family something she wanted very much but that day never came instead i buried myself in accomplishments because with accomplishments i believed i could control things i could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before i got sick and died like my uncle before me which i figured was my natural fate as for maury well i thought about him now and then the things he had taught me about being human and relating to others but it was always in the distance as if from another life over the years i threw away any mail that came from brandeis university figuring they were only asking for money so i did not know of mori's illness the people who might have told me were long forgotten their phone numbers buried in some packed away box in the attic it might have stayed that way had i not been flicking through the tv channels late one night when something caught my ear the audio visual in march of 1995 a limousine carrying ted koppel the host of abc tv's nightline pulled up to the snow-covered curb outside mori's house in west newton massachusetts maury was in a wheelchair full-time now getting used to helpers lifting him like a heavy sack from the chair to the bed and the bed to the chair he had begun to cough while eating and chewing was a chore his legs were dead he would never walk again yet he refused to be depressed instead mori had become a lightning rod of ideas he jotted down his thoughts on yellow pads envelopes folders scrap paper he wrote bite-sized philosophies about living with death shadow accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do except the past has passed without denying it or discarding it learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others don't assume that it's too late to get involved after a while he had more than 50 of these offerisms which he shared with his friends one friend a fellow brandeis professor named maury stein was so taken with the words that he sent them to a boston globe reporter who came out and wrote a long feature story on maury the headline read a professor's final course his own death the article caught the eye of a producer from the nightline show who brought it to couple in washington d.c take a look at this the producer said next thing you knew there were cameramen in mori's living room and couple's limousine was in front of the house several of maury's friends and family members had gathered to meet couple and when the famous man entered the house they bozed with excitement all except maury who wheeled himself forward raised his eyebrows and interrupted the clama with his high sing-song voice ted i need to check you out before i agree to do this interview there was an awkward moment of silence then the two men were ushered into the study the door was shut man one friend whispered outside the door i hope ted goes easy on maury i hope mori goes easy on ted said the other inside the office maury motioned for couple to sit down he crossed his hands in his lap and smiled tell me something close to your heart maury began my heart couple studied the old man all right he said cautiously and he spoke about his children they were close to his heart weren't they good mori said now tell me something about your faith couple was uncomfortable i usually don't talk about such things with people i've only known a few minutes ted i'm dying mori said peering over his glasses i don't have a lot of time here couple laughed all right faith he quoted a passage from marcus or elias something he felt strongly about maury nodded now let me ask you something couple said have you ever seen my program maury shrugged twice i think twice that's all don't feel bad i've only seen oprah once well the two times you saw my show what did you think maury paused to be honest yes i thought you were a narcissist couple burst into laughter i'm too ugly to be a narcissist he said soon the cameras were rolling in front of the living room fireplace with couple in his crisp blue suit and mori in his shaggy gray sweater he had refused fancy clothes clothes or makeup for this interview his philosophy was that death should not be embarrassing he was not about to powder its nose because mori sat in the wheelchair the camera never caught his withered legs and because he was still able to move his hands mori always spoke with both hands waiting he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life ted he said when all this started i asked myself am i going to withdraw from the world like most people do or am i going to live i decided i'm going to live or at least try to live the way i want with dignity with courage with humor with composure there are some mornings when i cry and cry and mourn for myself some mornings i'm so angry and bitter but it doesn't last too long then i get up and say i want to live so far i've been able to do it will i be able to continue i don't know but i'm betting on myself that i will couple seemed extremely taken with mori he asked about the humility that death induced well fred maury said accidentally then he quickly corrected himself i mean ted now that's inducing humility couple said laughing the two men spoke about the afterlife they spoke about mori's increasing dependency on other people he already needed help eating and sitting and moving from place to place what couple asked did maury dread the most about his slow insidious decay maury paused he asked if he could say this certain thing on television couple said go ahead maury looked straight into the eyes of the most famous interviewer in america well ted one day soon someone's gonna have to wipe my ass the program aired on a friday night it began with ted koppel from behind the desk in washington his voice booming with authority who is maury schwartz he said and why by the end of the night are so many of you going to care about him a thousand miles away in my house on the hill i was casually flipping channels i heard these words from the tv set who was maury schwartz and went numb it is our first class together in the spring of 1976. i enter maury's large office and notice the seemingly countless books that line the wall shelf after shelf books on sociology philosophy religion psychology there is a large rug on the hardwood floor and a window that looks out on the campus walk only a dozen or so students are there fumbling with notebooks and syllabi most of them wear jeans and earth shoes and plaid flannel shirts i tell myself it will not be easy to cut a class this small maybe i shouldn't take it mitchell mori says reading from the attendance list i raise a hand do you prefer mitch or is mitchell better i have never been asked this by a teacher i do a double take at this guy in his yellow turtleneck and green corduroy pants the silver hair that falls on his forehead he is smiling mitch i say mitch is what my friends called me well mitch it is then maury says as if closing a deal and mitch yes i hope that one day you will think of me as your friend the orientation as i turned the rental car on to maury street in west newton a quiet suburb of boston i had a cup of coffee in one hand and a cellular phone between my ear and shoulder i was talking to a tv producer about a piece we were doing my eyes jumped from the digital clock my return flight was in a few hours to the mailbox numbers on the treeline suburban street the car radio was on the all-new station this was how i operated five things at once roll back the tape i said to the producer let me hear that part again okay he said it's gonna take a second suddenly i was upon the house i pushed the brakes spinning coffee in my lap as the car stopped i caught a glimpse of a large japanese maple tree and three figures sitting near it in the driveway a young man and a middle-aged woman flanking a small old man in a wheelchair mori at the sight of my old professor i froze hello the producer said in my ear did i lose you i had not seen him in 16 years his hair was thinner nearly white and his face was gaunt i suddenly felt unprepared for this reunion for one thing i was stuck on the phone and i hoped that he hadn't noticed my arrival so that i could drive around the block a few more times finish my business get mentally ready but maury this new withered version of a man i had once known so well was smiling at the car hans folded in his lap waiting for me to emerge hey the producer said again are you there for all the time we've spent together for all the kindness and patience maury had shown me when i was young i should have dropped the phone and jumped from the car run and held him and kissed him hello instead i killed the engine and sunk down off the seat as if i were looking for something yeah yeah i'm here i whispered and continued my conversation with the tv producer until we were finished i did what i had become best at doing i tended to my work even while my dying professor waited on his front lawn i'm not proud of this but that is what i did now five minutes later maury was hugging me his thinning hair rubbing against my cheek i had told him i was searching for my keys that's what had taken me so long in the car and i squeezed him tighter as if i could crush my little eye although the spring sunshine was warm he wore a windbreaker and his legs were covered by a blanket he smelled faintly sour the way people on medications sometimes do with his face pressed close to mine i could hear his labored breathing in my ear my old friend he rocked against me not letting go his hands reaching up for my elbows as i bent over him i was surprised at such affection after all these years but then in the stone walls i had built between my present and my past i had forgotten how close we once were i remembered graduation day the briefcase his tears of my departure and i swallowed because i knew deep down that i was no longer the good gift-bearing student he remembered i only hoped that for the next few hours i could fool him inside the house we sat at a walnut dining room table near a window that looked out on the neighbor's house maury fussed with his wheelchair trying to get comfortable as was his custom he wanted to feed me and i said all right one of the helpers a stout italian woman named connie cut up bread and tomatoes and brought containers of chicken salad hummus and tabouli she also brought some pills maury looked at them inside his eyes were more sunken than i remembered them and his cheekbones more pronounced this gave him a harsher older look until he smiled of course and the sagging cheeks gathered up like curtains mitch he said softly you know that i'm dying i knew all right then memory swallowed the pills put down the paper cup inhaled deeply then let it out shall i tell you what it's like what it's like to die yes he said he said although i was unaware of it our last class had just begun it is my freshman year mori is older than most of the teachers and i am younger than most of the students having left high school a year early to compensate for my youth on campus i wear old gray sweatshirts and box in a local gym and walk around with an unlit cigarette in my mouth even though i do not smoke i drive a beat up mercury cooper with the windows down and the music up i seek my identity and toughness but it is more a softness that draws me and because he does not look at me as a kid trying to be something more than i am i relax i finish that first course with him and enroll for another he is an easy marker he does not much care for grades one year they say during the vietnam war maury gave all his male students a's to help them keep their student deferments i began to call mori coach the way i used to address my high school track coach mori likes the nickname coach he says all right i'll be your coach and you can be my player you can play all the lovely parts of life that i'm too old for now sometimes we eat together in the cafeteria mori to my delight is even more of a slob than i am he talks instead of chewing laughs with his mouth open delivers a passionate thought through a mouthful of egg salad the little yellow pieces spewing from his teeth it cracks me up the whole time i know him i have two overwhelming desires to hug him and to give him a napkin the classroom the sun beamed in through the dining room window lighting up the hardwood floor we had been talking there for nearly two hours the phone rang yet again and mori asked his helper connie to get it she had been jotting the caller's names in maury's small black appointment book friends meditation teachers a discussion group someone who wanted to photograph him for a magazine it was clear i was not the only one interested in visiting my old professor the nightline appearance had made him something of a celebrity but i was impressed with perhaps even a bit envious of all the friends that mori seemed to have i thought about the buddies that circled my orbit back in college where had they gone you know mitch now that i'm dying i've become much more interesting to people you were always interesting ho maury smiled smiled you're kind no i'm not i thought here's the thing he said people see me as a bridge i'm not as alive as i used to be but i'm not yet dead i'm sort of in between he coughed then regained his smile i'm on the last great journey here and people want me to tell them what to pack the phone rang again corey can you talk connie asked i'm visiting with my old pal now he had them call back and not tell you why he received me so warmly i was hardly the promising student who had left him 16 years earlier had it not been for nightline maury might have died without ever seeing me again i had no good excuse for this except the one that everyone these days seems to have i had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my own life i was busy what happened to me i asked myself maury's high smoky voice took me back to my university years when i thought rich people were evil a shirt and tie were prison clothes and life without freedom to get up and go motorcycle beneath you breeze in your face down the streets of paris into the mountains of tibet was not a good life at all what happened to me the 80s happened the 90s happened death and sickness and getting fat and going bald happened i traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck and i never even realized i was doing it yet here was mori talking with the wonder of our college years as if i'd simply been on a long vacation have you found someone to share your heart with he asked you giving to your community are you at peace with yourself are you trying to be as human as you can be i squirmed wanting to show i had been grappling deeply with such questions what happened to me i once promised myself i would never work for money that i would join the peace corps but i would live in beautiful inspirational places instead i had been in detroit for 10 years now at the same workplace using the same bank visiting the same barber i was 37 more efficient than in college tied to computers and modems and cell phones i wrote articles about rich athletes who for the most part could not care less about people like me me i was no longer young for my peer group nor did i walk around and gray sweatshirts with unlit cigarettes in my mouth i did not have long discussions over egg salad sandwiches about the meaning of life my days were full yet i remained much of the time unsatisfied what happened to me coach i said suddenly remembering the nickname maury b that's me i'm still your coach he laughed and resumed his eating a meal he had started 40 minutes earlier i watched him now his hands working gingerly as if he were learning to use them for the very first time he could not press down hard with a knife his fingers shook each bite was a struggle he chewed the food finally before swallowing and sometimes it slid out the sides of his lips so that he had to put down what he was holding to dab his face with a napkin the skin from his wrist to his knuckles was dotted with age spots and it was loose like skin hanging from a chicken soup bone for a while we just ate like that a sick old man a healthy younger man both absorbing the quiet of the room i would say it was an embarrassed silence but i seem to be the only one embarrassed dying bree suddenly said is only one thing to be sad over mitch living unhappily is something else so many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy why well for one thing the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves we're teaching the wrong things and you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work don't buy it create your own most people can't do it they are more unhappy than me even in my current condition i may be dying but i am surrounded by loving caring souls how many people can say that i was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity maury maury who could no longer dance swim bathe or walk mori who could no longer answer his own door dry himself after a shower or even roll over in bed how could he be so accepting i watched him struggle with his fork picking at a piece of tomato missing it the first two times a pathetic scene and yet i could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene the same calm breeze that sued me back in college i shot a glance at my watchforce of habit it was getting late and i thought about changing my plane reservation home then maury did something that haunts me to this day you know how i'm going to die he said i raised my eyebrows i'm going to suffocate yes my lungs because of my asthma can't handle the disease it's moving up my body this als it's already got my legs pretty soon it'll get my arms and hands and when it hits my lungs he shrugged his shoulders i'm sunk i had no idea what to say so i said well you know i mean you never know maury closed his eyes i know mitch you mustn't be afraid of my dying i've had a good life and we all know it's going to happen i maybe have four or five months come on i said nervously nobody can say i can he he said softly there's even a little test a doctor showed me inhale a few times i did as he said now once more but this time when you exhale count as many numbers as you can before you take another breath i quickly exhale the numbers one two three four five six seven eight i reached 70 before my breath was gone good you have healthy lungs now watch what i do he inhaled then began his number count in a soft wobbly voice 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 dash he stopped gasping for air when the doctor first asked me to do this i could reach 23 now it's 18 closed his eyes shook his head my tank is almost empty i tapped my thighs nervously that was enough for one afternoon come back and see your old professor mori said when i hugged him goodbye i promised i would and i tried not to think about the last time i promised this in the campus bookstore i shop for the items on maury's reading list i purchased books that i never knew existed titles such as youth identity and crisis i am now the divide itself before college i did not know the study of human relations could be considered scholarly until i met mori i did not believe it but his passion for books is real and contagious we begin to talk seriously sometimes after class when the room has emptied he asks me questions about my life then quotes lines from eric from martin buber eric erickson often he defers to their words footnoting his own advice even though he obviously thought the same things himself it is at these times that i realize he is indeed a professor not an uncle one afternoon i am complaining about the confusion of my age what is expected of me versus what i want for myself have i told you about the tension of opposites the tension of opposites life is a series of pulls back and forth you want to do one thing but you are bound to do something else something hurts you yet you know it shouldn't you take certain things for granted even when you know you should never take anything for granted attention of opposites like a pool on a rubber band and most of us live somewhere in the middle like a wrestling match i say a wrestling match yes you could describe life that way so which side wins i ask which side wins he smiles at me the crinkled eyes the crooked teeth love wins love always wins taking attendance i flew to london a few weeks later i was covering wimbledon the world's premier tennis competition and one of the few events i go to where the crowd never booze and no one is drunk in the parking lot england was warm and cloudy and each morning i walked the treeline streets near the tennis courts passing teenagers queued up for leftover tickets and vendors selling strawberries and cream outside the gate was a newsstand that sold a half dozen colorful british tabloids featuring photos of topless women paparazzi pictures of the royal family horoscopes sports lottery contests and a wee bit of actual news their top headline of the day was written on a small chalkboard that leaned against the latest stack of papers and usually read something like diana in row with charles orgaza2 team give me millions people scooped up these tabloids devoured their gossip and on previous trips to england i had always done the same but now for some reason i found myself thinking about maury whenever i read anything silly or mindless i kept picturing him there in the house with the japanese maple and the hardwood floors counting his breath squeezing out every moment with his loved ones while i spent so many hours on things that meant absolutely nothing to me personally movie stars supermodels the latest noise out of princess d or madonna or john f kennedy jr in a strange way i envied the quality of maury's time even as i lamented its diminishing supply why did we bother with all the distractions we did back home the oj simpson trial was in full swing and there were people who surrendered their entire lunch hours watching it then take the rest so they could watch more at night they didn't know jay simpson they didn't know anyone involved in the case yet they gave up days and weeks of their lives addicted to someone else's drama i remembered what maurice said during our visit the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves and you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work don't buy it mori true to these words had developed his own culture long before he got sick discussion groups walks with friends dancing to his music in the harvard square church he started a project called greenhouse where poor people could receive mental health services he read books to find new ideas for his classes visited with colleagues kept up with old students wrote letters to distant friends he took more time eating and looking at nature and wasted no time in front of tv sitcoms or movies of the week he had created a cocoon of human activities conversation interaction affection and it filled his life like an overflowing soup bowl i had also developed my own culture work i did four or five media jobs in england juggling them like a clown clown i spent eight hours a day on a computer feeding my stories back to the states then i did tv pieces traveling with a crew throughout parts of london i also phoned in radio reports every morning and afternoon this was not an abnormal load over the years i had taken labor as my companion and had moved everything else to the side in wimbledon i ate meals at my little wooden work cubicle and thought nothing of it on one particularly crazy day a crush of reporters had tried to chase down andre agassi and his famous girlfriend brook shields and i had gotten knocked over by a british photographer who barely muttered sorry before sweeping past his huge metal lenses strapped around his neck i thought of something else maury had told me so many people walk around with a meaningless life they seem half asleep even when they're busy doing things they think are important this is because they're chasing the wrong things the way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others devote yourself to your community around you and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and needing i knew he was right not that i did anything about it at the end of the tournament and the countless cups of coffee i drank to get through it i closed my computer cleaned out my cubicle and went back to the apartment to pack it was late the tv was nothing but fuzz i flew to detroit arrived late in the afternoon dragged myself home and went to sleep i awoke to a jolting piece of news the unions of my newspaper had gone on strike the place was shut down there were picketers at the front entrance and marchers chanting up and down the street as a member of the union i had no choice i was suddenly and for the first time in my life out of a job out of a paycheck and pitted against my employers union leaders called my home and warned me against any contact with my former editors many of whom were my friends telling me to hang up if they tried to call and plead their case we're going to fight until we win the union leaders swore sounding like soldiers i felt confused and depressed although the tv and radio work were nice supplements the newspaper had been my lifeline my oxygen when i saw my stories in print each morning i knew that in at least one way i was alive now it was gone and as the strike continued the first day the second day the third day there were worried phone calls and rumors that this could go on for months everything i had known was upside down there were sporting events each night that i would have gone to cover instead i stayed home watched them on tv i had grown used to thinking readers somehow needed my column i was stunned at how easily things went on without me after a week of this i picked up the phone and dialed morey's number connie brought into the phone you're coming to visit me he said less a question than a statement well could i how about tuesday tuesday would be good i said tuesday would be fine in my sophomore year i take two more of his courses we go beyond the classroom meeting now and then just to talk i have never done this before with an adult who is not a relative yet i feel comfortable doing it with maury and he seems comfortable making the time where shall we visit today he asks shirley when i enter his office in the spring we sit under a tree outside the sociology building and in the winter we sit by his desk me and my grey sweatshirts and adidas sneakers more in rockport shoes and corduroy pants each time we talk lye listens to me ramble then he tries to pass on some sort of life lesson he warns me that money is not the most important thing contrary to the popular view on campus he tells me i need to be fully human he speaks of the alienation of youth and the need for connectedness with the society around me some of these things i understand some i do not it makes no difference the discussions give me an excuse to talk to him fatherly conversations i cannot have with my own father who would like me to be a lawyer maury hates lawyers what do you want to do when you get out of college he asks i want to be a musician i say piano player wonderful he says but that's a hard life yeah a lot of sharks that's what i hear still he says if you really want it then you'll make your dream happen i want to hug him to thank him for saying that but i am not that open i only nod instead i'll bet you play piano with a lot of pep he says i laugh pep he laughs back pep what's the matter they don't say that anymore the first tuesday we talk about the world connie opened the door and let me in maury was in his wheelchair by the kitchen table wearing a loose cotton shirt and even looser black sweatpants they were loose because his legs had atrophied beyond normal clothing size you could get two hands around his thighs and have your fingers touch had he been able to stand he'd have been no more than five feet tall and he'd probably have fit into a sixth grader's jeans i got you something i announced holding up a brown paper bag i had stopped on my way from the airport at a nearby supermarket and purchased some turkey potato salad macaroni salad and bagels i knew there was plenty of food at the house but i wanted to contribute something i was so powerless to help maury otherwise and i remembered his fondness for eating off so much food he sang well now you have to eat it with me we sat at the kitchen table surrounded by wicker chairs this time without the need to make up 16 years of information we slid quickly into the familiar waters of our old college dialogue maury asking questions listening to my replies stopping like a chef to sprinkle in something i'd forgotten or hadn't realized he asked about the newspaper strike and true to form he couldn't understand why both sides didn't simply communicate with each other and solve their problems i told him not everyone was as smart as he was occasionally he had to stop to use the bathroom a process that took some time connie would will him to the toilet toilet then lift him from the chair and support him as he urinated into the beaker each time he came back he looked tired do you remember when i told ted koppel that pretty soon someone was gonna have to wipe my ass he said i laughed you don't forget a moment like that well i think the day is coming that one bothers me why because it's the ultimate sign of dependency someone wiping your bottom but i'm working on it i'm trying to enjoy the process enjoy it yes after all i get to be a baby one more time that's a unique way of looking at it well i have to look at life uniquely now let's face it i can't go shopping i can't take care of the bank accounts i can't take out the garbage but i can sit here with my dwindling days and look at what i think is important in life i have both the time and the reason to do that so i said in a reflexively cynical response i guess the key to finding the meaning of life is to stop taking out the garbage he laughed and i was relieved that he did as connie took the plates away i noticed a stack of newspapers that had obviously been read before i got there you bother keeping up with the news i asked yes maury said do you think that's strange do you think because i'm dying i shouldn't care what happens in this world maybe he sighed maybe you're right maybe i shouldn't care after all i won't be around to see how it all turns out but it's hard to explain mitch now that i'm suffering i feel closer to people who suffer than i ever did before the other night on tv i saw people in bosnia running across the street getting fired upon killed innocent victims and i just started to cry i feel their anguish as if it were my own i don't know any of these people but how can i put this i'm almost drawn to them his eyes got moist and i tried to change the subject but he dabbed his face and waved me off i cry all the time now he said never mind amazing i thought i worked in the news business i covered stories where people died i interviewed grieving family members i even attended the funerals i never cried maury for the suffering of people half a world away was weeping is this what comes at the end i wondered maybe death is the great equalizer the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another maury honked loudly into the tissue this is okay with you isn't it men crying sure i said too quickly he grinned ah mitch i'm gonna loosen you up one day i'm gonna show you it's okay to cry yeah yeah i said yeah yeah he said we laughed because he used to say the same thing nearly 20 years earlier mostly on tuesdays in fact tuesday had always been our day together most of my courses with mori were on tuesdays he had office hours on tuesdays and when i wrote my senior thesis which was pretty much mori's suggestion right from the start it was on tuesdays that we sat together by his desk or in the cafeteria or on the steps of pullman hall going over the work so it seemed only fitting that we were back together on a tuesday here in the house with the japanese maple out front as i ready to go i mentioned this to maury we're tuesday people he said tuesday people i repeated maury smiled mitch you asked about caring for people i don't even know but can i tell you the thing i'm learning most with this disease what's that the most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love love and to let it come in his voice dropped to a whisper let it come in we think we don't deserve love we think if we let it and we'll become too soft but a wise man named levine said it right he said love is the only rational act he repeated it carefully pausing for effect love is the only rational act i nodded like a good student and he exhaled weakly i leaned over to give him a hug and then although it is not really like me i kissed him on the cheek i felt his weakened hands on my arms the thin stubble of his whiskers brushing my face so you'll come back next tuesday he whispered here's the classroom sits down doesn't say anything he looks at it we look at him at first there are a few giggles but mori only shrugs and eventually a deep silence falls and we begin to notice the smallest sounds the radiator humming in the corner of the room the nasal breathing of one of the fat students some of us are agitated when is like going to say something we squirm check our watches a few students look out the window trying to be above it all this goes on a good 15 minutes before maury finally breaks in with a whisper what's happening here he asks and slowly a discussion begins as maury has wanted all along about the effect of silence on human relations why are we embarrassed by silence what comfort do we find in all the noise i am not bothered by the silence for all the noise i make with my friends i am still not comfortable talking about my feelings in front of others especially not classmates i could sit in the quiet for hours if that is what the class demanded on my way out maury stops me you didn't say much today he remarks i don't know i just didn't have anything to add i think you have a lot to add in fact mitch you remind me of someone i knew who also liked to keep things to himself when he was younger who me the second tuesday we talk about feeling sorry for yourself i came back the next tuesday and for many tuesdays that followed i looked forward to these visits more than one would think considering i was flying 700 miles to sit alongside a dying man but i seemed to slip into a time warp when i visited mori and i liked myself better when i was there i no longer rented a cellular phone for the rides from the airport let them wait i told myself mimicking mori the newspaper situation in detroit had not improved in fact it had grown increasingly insane with nasty confrontations between picketers and replacement workers people arrested beaten lying in the street in front of delivery trucks in light of this my visits with mori felt like a cleansing rinse of human kindness we talked about life and we talked about love we talked about one of mori's favorite subjects compassion and why our society had such a shortage of it before my third visit i stopped at a market called bread and circus i had seen their bags in mori's house and figured he must like the food there and i loaded up with plastic containers from their fresh food takeaway things like vermicelli with vegetables and carrot soup and baklava when i entered mori steady i lifted the bags as if i just robbed the bank food man i bellowed mori rolled his eyes and smiled meanwhile i looked for signs of the disease's progression his fingers worked well enough to write with a pencil or hold up his glasses but he could not lift his arms much higher than his chest he was spending less and less time in the kitchen or living room and more in his study where he had a large reclining chair set up with pillows blankets and specially cut pieces of foam rubber that held his feet and gave support to his withered legs he kept the bell near his side and when his head needed adjusting or he had to go on the commode as he referred to it he would shake the bell and connie tony bertha or amy his small army of home care workers would come in it wasn't always easy for him to lift the bell and he got frustrated when he couldn't make it work i asked maury if he felt sorry for himself sometimes in the mornings he said that's when i mourn i feel around my body i move my fingers and my hands whatever i can still move and i mourn what i've lost i'm more in the slow insidious way in which i'm dying but then i stop mourning just like that i give myself a good cry if i need it but then i concentrate on all the good things still in my life on the people who are coming to see me on the stories i'm going to hear on you if it's tuesday because we're tuesday people i grinned tuesday people mitch i don't allow myself any more self-pity than that a little each morning a few tears and that's all i thought about all the people i knew who spent many of their waking hours feeling sorry for themselves how useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity just a few tearful minutes then on with the day and if maury could do it with such a horrible disease it's only horrible if you see it that way maury said it's horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing but it's also wonderful because of all the time i get to say goodbye he smiled not everyone is so lucky i studied him in his chair unable to stand to wash the pull on his pants lucky did he really say lucky during a break when maury had to use the bathroom i leafed through the boston newspaper that sat near his chair there was a story about a small timber town where two teenage girls tortured and killed a 73 year old man who had befriended them then threw a party in his trailer home and showed off the corpse there was another story about the upcoming trial of a straight man who killed a gay man after the latter had gone on a tv talk show and said he had a crush on him i put the paper away maury was rolled back in smiling as always and connie went to lift him from the wheelchair to the recliner you want me to do that i asked there was a momentary silence and i'm not even sure why i offered but maury looked at connie and said can you show him how to do it sure connie said following her instructions i leaned over locked my forearms under maury's armpits and hooked him toward me as if lifting a large log from underneath then i straightened up hoisting him as i rose normally when you lift someone you expect their arms to tighten around your grip but maury could not do this he was mostly dead weight and i felt his head bounce softly on my shoulder and his body sag against me like a big damp loaf and he softly groaned groaned i gotcha i gotcha i said holding him like that moved me in a way i cannot describe except to say i felt the seeds of death inside his shriveling frame and as i laid him in his chair adjusting his head on the pillows i had the coldest realization that her time was running out and i had to do something it is my junior year 1978 when disco and rocking movies are the cultural rage we are in an unusual sociology class at brandeis something mori calls group process each week we study the ways in which the students in the group interact with one another how they respond to anger jealousy attention we are human lab rats more often than not someone ends up crying i refer to it as the touchy-feely course mori says i should be more open-minded on this day mori says he has an exercise for us to try we are to stand facing away from our classmates and fall backward relying on another student to catch us most of us are uncomfortable with this and we cannot let go for more than a few inches before stopping ourselves we laugh in embarrassment finally one student a thin quiet dark-haired girl whom i notice almost always wears bulky white fisherman sweaters crosses her arms over her chest closes her eyes leans back and does not flinch like one of those lipton tea commercials where the model splashes into the pool for a moment i am sure she is going to thump on the floor at the last instant her assigned partner grabs her head and shoulders and yanks her up harshly whoa several students yell some clap mori underscore finally smiles you see he says to the girl you closed your eyes that was the difference sometimes you cannot believe what you see you have to believe what you feel and if you are ever going to have other people trust you you must feel that you can trust them to even when you're in the dark even when you're falling the third tuesday we talk about regrets the next tuesday i arrived with the normal bags of food pasta with corn potato salad apple cobbler and something else else a sony tape recorder i want to remember what we talk about i told mori i want to have your voice so i can listen to it later when i'm dead don't say that he laughed mitch i'm going to die and sooner not later he regarded the new machine so big he said i felt intrusive as reporters often do and i began to think that a tape machine between two people who were supposedly friends was a foreign object an artificial ear with all the people clamoring for his time perhaps i was trying to take too much away from these tuesdays listen i said picking up a recorder we don't have to use this if it makes you uncomfortable he stopped me wagged a finger then hooked his glasses off his nose letting them dangle on the string around his neck he looked me square in the eye put it down he said i put it down mitch he continued softly now you don't understand i want to tell you about my life i want to tell you before i can't tell you anymore his voice dropped to a whisper i want someone to hear my story will you i nodded we sat quietly for a moment so he said is it turned on now the truth is that tape recorder was more than nostalgia i was losing maury we were all losing mori his family his friends his ex students his fellow professors his pals from the political discussion groups that he loves so much his former dance partners all of us and i suppose tapes like photographs and videos are a desperate attempt to steal something from death's suitcase but it was also becoming clear to me through his courage his humor his patience and his openness that maury was looking at life from some very different place than anyone else i knew a healthier place a more sensible place and he was about to die if some mystical clarity of thought came when you look death in the eye then i knew more he wanted to share it and i wanted to remember it for as long as i could the first time i saw maury on nightline one wondered what regrets he had once he knew his death was imminent did he lament lost friends would he have done much differently selfishly i wondered if i were in his shoes would i be consumed with sad thoughts of all that i had missed would i regret the secrets i had kept hidden when i mentioned this to mori he nodded it's what everyone worries about isn't it what if today were my last day on earth he studied my face and perhaps he saw an ambivalence about my own choices i had this vision of me keeling over at my desk one day halfway through a story my editor snatching the copy even as the medics carried my body away mitch maury said i shook my head and said nothing but mori picked up on my hesitation mitch he said the culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die we're so wrapped up with egotistical things career family having enough money meeting the mortgage getting a new car fixing the radiator when it breaks weary involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going so we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying is this all is this all i want is something missing he paused you need someone to probe you in that direction it won't just happen automatically i knew what he was saying we all need teachers in our lives and mine was sitting in front of me fine i figured if i was to be the student then i would be as good a student as i could be on the plane ride home that day i made a small list on a yellow legal pad issues and questions that we all grapple with from happiness to aging to having children to death course there were a million self-help books on these subjects and plenty of cable tv shows and nine dollar per hour consultation sessions america had become a persian bazaar of self-help but there still seem to be no clear answers do you take care of others or take care of your inner child return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless seek success or seek simplicity just say no or just do it all i knew was this mori my old professor wasn't in the self-help business he was standing on the tracks listening to death's locomotive whistle and he was very clear about the important things in life i wanted that clarity every confused and tortured soul i knew wanted that clarity ask me anything mori always said so i wrote this list death fear aging greed marriage family society forgiveness for a while we just ate like that a sick old man a healthy younger man both absorbing the quiet of the room i would say it was an embarrassed silence but i seem to be the only one embarrassed dying they suddenly said is is only one thing to be sad over mitch living unhappily is something else so many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy why well for one thing the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves we're teaching the wrong things and you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work don't buy it create your own most people can't do it they are more unhappy than me even in my current condition i may be dying but i am surrounded by loving caring souls how many people can say that i was astonished by his complete lack of self-pity mori maury who could no longer dance swim bathe or walk mori who could no longer answer his own door dry himself after a shower or even roll over in bed how could he be so accepting i watched him struggle with his fork picking in a piece of tomato missing it the first two times a pathetic scene and yet i could not deny that sitting in his presence was almost magically serene the same calm breeze that sued me back in college i shot a glance at my watchforce of habit it was getting late and i thought about changing my plane reservation home then maury did something that haunts me to this day you know how i'm going to die he said i raise my eyebrows i'm going to suffocate yes my lungs because of my asthma can't handle the disease it's moving up my body this als it's already got my legs pretty soon it'll get my arms and hands and when it hits my lungs he shrugged his shoulders i'm sunk i had no idea what to say so i said well you know i mean you never know maury closed his eyes i know mitch you mustn't be afraid of my dying i've had a good life and we all know it's going to happen i maybe have four or five months come on i said nervously nobody can say i can he he said softly there's even a little test a doctor showed me inhale a few times i did as he said now once more but this time when you exhale count as many numbers as you can before you take another breath i quickly exhale the numbers one two three four five six seven eight i reached 70 before my breath was gone good you have healthy lungs now watch what i do he inhaled then began his number count in a soft wobbly voice 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 dash he stopped gasping for air when the doctor first asked me to do this i could reach 23 now it's 18 closed his eyes shook his head my tank is almost empty i tapped my thighs nervously that was enough for one afternoon come back and see your old professor maury said when i hugged him goodbye i promised i would and i tried not to think about the last time i promised this in the campus bookstore i shop for the items on maury's reading list i purchased books that i never knew existed titles such as youth identity and crisis i am now the divide itself before college i did not know the study of human relations could be considered scholarly until i met maury i did not believe it but his passion for books is real and contagious we begin to talk seriously sometimes after class when the room has emptied he asked me questions about my life then quotes lines from eric from martin boober eric erickson often he defers to their words footnoting his own advice even though he obviously thought the same things himself it is at these times that i realize he is indeed a professor not an uncle one afternoon i am complaining about the confusion of my age what is expected of me versus what i want for myself have i told you about the tension of opposites the tension of opposites life is a series of pulls back and forth you want to do one thing but you are bound to do something else something hurts you yet you know it shouldn't you take certain things for granted even when you know you should never take anything for granted attention of opposites like a pool on a rubber band and most of us live somewhere in the middle it's like a wrestling match i say a wrestling match yes you could describe life that way so which side wins i ask which side wins he smiles at me the crinkled eyes the crooked teeth love wins love always wins audiovisual part two the nightline show had done a follow-up story on mori partly because agree the reception for the first show had been so strong this time when the cameraman and producers came through the door they already felt like family and koppel himself was noticeably warmer there was no feeling out process no interview before the interview as warm up koppel and mori exchanged stories about their childhood backgrounds couple spoke of growing up in england and mori spoke of growing up in the bronx mori wore a long-sleeved blue shirt was almost always chilly even when it was 90 degrees outside but koppel removed his jacket and did the interview in shirt and tie it was as if maury were breaking him down one layer at a time you look fine couple said when the tape began to roll that's what everybody tells me maury said you sound fine that's what everybody tells me so how do you know things are going downhill maury sighed nobody can know it but me ted but i know it and as he spoke it became obvious he was not waving his hands to make a point as freely as he had in their first conversation he had trouble pronouncing certain words the l sound seemed to get caught in his throat in a few more months he might no longer speak at all here's how my emotions go maury told koppel when i have people and friends here i'm very up the loving relationships maintain me but there are days when i am depressed let me not deceive you i see certain things going and i feel a sense of dread what am i going to do without my hands what happens when i can't speak swallowing i don't care so much about so they feed me through a tube so what but my voice my hands they're such an essential part of me i talk with my voice i gesture with my hands this is how i give to people how will you give when you can no longer speak couple asked mauree shrugged maybe i'll have everyone ask me yes or no questions it was such a simple answer that couple had to smile he asked mori about silence he mentioned a dear friend maury had moristein who had first sent maury's aphorisms to the boston globe they had been together at brandeis since the early 60s now stein was going deaf couple imagined the two men together one day one unable to speak the other unable to hear what would that be like we will hold hands more he said and there will be a lot of love passing between us ted we've had 35 years of friendship you don't need speech or hearing to feel that before the show ended maury read koppel one of the letters he'd received since the first nightline program there had been a great deal of mail one particular letter came from a schoolteacher in pennsylvania who taught a special class of nine children every child in the class had suffered the death of a parent here's what i sent her back maury told koppel purging his glasses gingerly on his nose and ears dear barbara i was very moved by your letter i feel the work you have done with the children who have lost a parent is very important i also lost a parent at an early age suddenly with the camera still humming maury adjusted the glasses he stopped at his lip and began to choke up tears fell down his nose i lost my mother when i was a child and it was quite a blow to me i wish i'd had a group like yours where i would have been able to talk about my sorrows i would have joined your group because his voice cracked because i was so lonely maury koppel said that was 70 years ago your mother died the pain still goes on you bet mori whispered the professor he was eight years old a telegram came from the hospital and since his father a russian immigrant could not read english mori had to break the news reading his mother's death notice like a student in front of the class we regret to inform you he began on the morning of the funeral maury's relatives came down the steps of his tenement building on the poor lower east side of manhattan the men wore dark suits the women wore veils the kids in the neighborhood were going off to school and as they passed mori looked down ashamed that his classmates would see him this way one of his aunts a heavyset woman grabbed maury and began to wail what will you do without your mother what will become of you maury burst into tears his classmates ran away at the cemetery mori watched as they shoveled dirt into his mother's grave he tried to recall the tender moments they had shared when she was alive she had operated a candy store until she got sick after which she mostly slept her sat by the window looking frail and weak sometimes she would yell out for her son to get her some medicine and young maury playing stickball in the street would pretend he did not hear her in his mind he believed he could make the illness go away by ignoring it how else can a child confront death maury's father father whom everyone called charlie had come to america to escape the russian army he worked in the fur business but was constantly out of a job uneducated and barely able to speak english he was terribly poor and the family was on public assistance much of the time their apartment was a dark cramped depressing place behind the candy store they had no luxuries no car sometimes to make money morey and his younger brother david would wash pork steps together for a nickel after their mother's death the two boys were sent off to a small hotel in the connecticut woods where several families shared a large cabin and a communal kitchen the fresh air might be good for the children the relatives thought maury and david had never seen so much greenery and they ran and played in the fields one night after dinner they went for a walk and it began to rain rather than come inside they splashed around for hours the next morning when they awoke maury hopped out of bed come on he said to his brother get up i can't what do you mean david's face was panicked i can't move he had polio of course the rain did not cause this but a child maury's age could not understand that for a long time as his brother was taken back and forth to a special medical home and was forced to wear braces on his legs which left him limping more he felt responsible so in the mornings he went to synagogue by himself because his father was not a religious man he stood among the swaying men in their long black coats he asked god to take care of his dead mother and his sick brother and in the afternoons he stood at the bottom of the subway steps and hawked magazines turning whatever money he made over to his family to buy food in the evenings he watched his father eat in silence hoping for but never getting a show of affection communication warmth at nine years old he felt as if the weight of a mountain were on his shoulders but a saving embrace came into mori's life the following year his new stepmother eva she was a short romanian immigrant with plain features curly brown hair and the energy of two women she had a glow that warmed the otherwise murky atmosphere his father created she talked when her new husband was silent she sang songs to the children at night mori took comfort in her soothing voice her school lessons her strong character when his brother returned from the medical home still wearing leg braces from the polio the two of them shared a roll-away bed in the kitchen of their apartment and eva would kiss them good night mori waited on those kisses like a puppy waits on milk and he felt deep down that he had a mother again there was no escaping their poverty however they lived now in the bronx in a one bedroom apartment in a red brick building on tremont avenue next to an italian beer garden where the old men played bocce on summer evenings because of the depression mori's father found even less work in the for business sometimes when the family sat at the dinner table all eva could put out was bread what else is there david would ask nothing else she would answer when she tucked maury and david into bed she would sing to them in yiddish even the songs were sad and poor there was one about a girl trying to sell her cigarettes please buy my cigarettes they are dry not wet by rain take pity on me take pity on me still despite their circumstances mori was taught to love and to care and to learn eva would accept nothing less than excellence in school because she saw education as the only antidote to their poverty she herself went to night school to improve her english maury's love for education was hatched in her arms he studied at night by the lamp at the kitchen table and in the mornings he would go to synagogue to say yes for the memorial prayer for the dead for his mother he did this to keep her memory alive incredibly maury had been told by his father never to talk about her charlie wanted young david to think eva was his natural mother it was a terrible burden to maury for years the only evidence maury had of his mother was the telegram announcing her death he had hidden it the day it arrived he would keep it the rest of his life when mori was a teenager his father took him to a fur factory where he worked this was during the depression the idea was to get more a job he entered the factory and immediately felt as if the walls had closed and around him the room was dark and hot the windows covered with filth and the machines were packed tightly together turning like train wheels the fur hairs were flying creating a thickened air and the workers sewing the pelts together were bent over their needles as the boss marched up and down the rows screaming for them to go faster maury could barely breathe he stood next to his father frozen with fear hoping the boss wouldn't scream at him too during lunch break his father took mori to the boss and pushed him in for them asking if there was any work for his son but there was barely enough work for the adult laborers and no one was giving it up this for maury was a blessing he hated the place he made another vow that someone else and he would never allow himself to make money off the sweat of others what will you do eva would ask him i don't know he would say he ruled out law because he didn't like lawyers and he ruled out medicine because he couldn't take the side of blood what will you do it was only through default that the best professor i ever had became a teacher a teacher athletics eternity he can never tell where his influence stops henry adams the fourth tuesday we talk about death let's begin with this idea maury said everyone knows they're going to die but nobody believes it he was in a business-like move this tuesday the subject was death the first item on my list before i arrived mori had scribbled a few notes on small white pieces of paper so that he wouldn't forget his shaky handwriting was now indecipherable to everyone but him it was almost labor day and through the office window i could see the spinach colored hedges of the backyard and hear the yells of children playing down the street their last week of freedom before school began back in detroit the newspaper strikers were gearing up for a huge holiday demonstration to show the solidarity of unions against management on the plane ride in i had read about a woman who had shot her husband and two daughters as they lay sleeping claiming she was protecting them from the bad people in california the lawyers in the oj simpson trial were becoming huge celebrities here in mori's office life went on one precious day at a time now we sat together a few feet from the newest addition to the house an oxygen machine it was small and portable about knee-high on some nights when he couldn't get enough air to swallow mori attached the long plastic tubing to his nose clamping on his nostrils like a leech i hated the idea of mori connected to a machine of any kind and i tried not to look at it as more he spoke everyone knows they're going to die he said again but nobody believes it if we did we would do things differently so we kid ourselves about death i said yes but there's a better approach to know you're going to die and to be prepared for it at any time that's better that way you can actually be more involved in your life while you're living how can you ever be prepared to die do what the buddhists do every day have a little bird on your shoulder that asks is today the day am i ready am i doing all i need to do am i being the person i want to be he turned his head to his shoulder is it the bird with her now is today the day i die he said mori borrowed freely from all religions he was born jewish but became an agnostic when he was a teenager partly because of all that happened to him as a child he enjoyed some of the philosophies of buddhism and christianity and he still felt at home culturally in judaism he was a religious mutt which made him even more open to the students he taught over the years and the things he was saying in his final months on earth seem to transcend all religious differences death has a way of doing that the truth is mitch he said once you learn how to die you learn how to live i nodded i'm going to say it again he said once you learn how to die you learn how to live he smiled and i realized what he was doing he was making sure i absorbed this point without embarrassing me by asking it was part of what made him a good teacher did you think much about death before you got sick i asked no more he smiled i was like everyone else i once told a friend of mine in a moment of exuberance i'm gonna be the healthiest old man you ever met how old were you in my 60s so you were optimistic why not like i said no one really believes they're going to die but everyone knows someone who has died i said why is it so hard to think about dying because mori conti continued most of us all walk around as if we're sleepwalking we really don't experience the world fully because we're half asleep doing things we automatically think we have to do and facing death changes all that oh yes you strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials when you realize you are going to die you see everything much differently he sighed learn how to die and you learn how to live i noticed that he quivered now when he moved his hands his glasses hung around his neck and when he lifted them to his eyes they slid around his temples as if he were trying to put them on someone else in the dark i reached over to help guide them onto his ears thank you maury whispered he smiled when my hand brushed up against his head the slightest human contact was immediate joy mitch can i tell you something of course i said you might not like it why not well the truth is if you really listen to that bird on your shoulder if you accept that you can die at any time then you might not be as ambitious as you are i forced a small grin the things you spend so much time on all this work you do might not seem as important you might have to make room for some more spiritual things spiritual things you hate that word don't you spiritual you think it's touchy-feely stuff well i said he tried to wink a bad try and i broke down and laughed mitch he said laughing along even i don't know what spiritual development really means but i do know we're deficient in some way we are too involved in materialistic things and they don't satisfy us the loving relationships we have the universe around us we take these things for granted he nodded toward the window with the sunshine streaming in you see that you can go out there outside anytime anytime you can run up and down the block and go crazy i can't do that i can't go out i can't run i can't be out there without fear of getting sick but you know what i appreciate that window more than you do appreciate it yes i look out that window every day i notice the change in the trees how strong the wind is blowing it's as if i can see time actually passing through that window pane because i know my time is almost done i am drawn to nature like i'm seeing it for the first time he stopped and for a moment we both just looked out the window i tried to see what he saw i tried to see time and seasons my life passing in slow motion mori dropped his head slightly and curled it toward his shoulder is it today little bird he asked is it today letters from around the world kept coming to maury thanks to the nightline appearances he would sit when he was up to it and dictate the responses to friends and family who gathered for their letter writing sessions one sunday when his sons rob and john were home they all gathered in the living room maury sat in his wheelchair his skinny legs under a blanket when he got cold one of his helpers draped a nylon jacket over his shoulders what's the first letter mari said a colleague read a note from a woman named nancy who had lost her mother to als she wrote to say how much she had suffered through the loss and how she knew that maury must be suffering too alright mori said when the reading was complete he shut his eyes let's start by saying dear nancy you touched me very much with your story about your mother and i understand what you went through there is sadness and suffering on both parts grieving has been good for me and i hope it has been good for you also you might want to change that last line rob said mori thought for a second then said you're right how about i hope you can find the healing power in grieving is that better rob nodded ed thank you maurice mori said another letter was read from a woman named jane who was thanking him for his inspiration on the nightline program she referred to him as a prophet that's a very high compliment said a colleague a prophet maury made a face he obviously didn't agree with the assessment let's thank her for her high praise and tell her i'm glad my words meant something to her and don't forget to sign thank you maury there was a letter from a man in england who had lost his mother and asked mori to help him contact her through the spiritual world there was a letter from a couple who wanted to drive to boston to meet him there was a long letter from a former graduate student who wrote about her life after the university he told of a murder suicide and three stillborn births it told of a mother who died from als it expressed fear that she the daughter would also contract the disease it went on and on two pages three pages four pages maury sat through the long grim tail when it was finally finished he said softly well what do we answer the group was quiet finally rob said how about thanks for your long letter everyone laughed maury looked at his son and beamed the newspaper near his chair has a photo of a boston baseball player who is smiling after pitching a shutout of all the diseases i think to myself mora gets one named after an athlete you remember lou gehrig i asked i remember him in the stadium saying goodbye so you remember the famous line which one come on lou gehrig pride of the yankees the speech that echoes over the loudspeakers remind me mori says do the speech through the open window i hear the sound of a garbage truck although it is hot mori is wearing long sleeves with a blanket over his legs his skin pale the disease owns him i raise my voice into the garrog imitation where the words bounce off the stadium walls today i feel like the luckiest man on the face of the earth mori closes his eyes and nods slowly yeah well i didn't say that the fifth tuesday we talk about family it was the first week in september back to school week and after 35 consecutive items my old professor did not have a class waiting for him on a college campus boston was teeming with students double parked on side streets unloading trunks and here was maury in his study it seemed wrong like those football players who finally retire and have to face the first sunday at home watching on tv thinking i could still do that i have learned from dealing with those players that it is best to leave them alone when their old seasons come around don't say anything but then i didn't need to remind mori of his dwindling time for our taped conversations we had switched from handheld microphones because it was too difficult now for more to hold anything that long to the lavalier kind popular with tv news people you can clip these onto a collar or lapel of course since mori only wore soft cotton shirts that hung loosely on his ever shrinking frame the microphone sagged and flopped and i had to reach over and adjust it frequently maury seemed to enjoy this because it brought me close to him in hugging range and his need for physical affection was stronger than ever when i leaned in i heard his wheezing breath and his weak coughing and he smacked his lips softly before he swallowed well my friend he said what are we talking about today how about family family he molded over for a moment well you see mine all around me he nodded to photos on his bookshelves of mori as a child with his grandmother maury is a young man with his brother david mori with his wife charlotte mori with his two sons rob a journalist in tokyo and ion a computer expert in boston i think in light of what we've been talking about all these weeks family becomes even more important he said the fact is there is no foundation no secure ground upon which people may stand today if it isn't the family it's become quite clear to me as i've been sick if you don't have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family you don't have much at all love is so supremely important as our great poet odden said love each other or perish love each other or perish i wrote it down odden said that love each other or perish maury said it's good no and it's so true without love we are birds with broken wings say i was divorced or living alone or had no children this disease what i'm going through would be so much harder i'm not sure i could do it sure people would come visit friends associates but it's not the same as having someone who will not leave it's not the same as having someone whom you know has an eye on you is watching you the whole time this is part of what a family is about not just love but letting others know there's someone who is watching out for them it's what i missed so much when my mother died what i call your spiritual security knowing that your family will be there watching out for you nothing else will give you that not money not fame he shot me a look not work he added raising a family was one of those issues on my little listings you want to get right before it's too late i told mori about my generation's dilemma with having children how we often saw them is tying us down making us into these parent things that we did not want to be i admitted to some of these emotions myself yet when i looked at maury i wondered if i were in his shoes about to die and i had no family no children would the emptiness be unbearable he had raised his two sons to be loving and caring and like maury they were not shy with their affection had he so desired they would have stopped what they were doing to be with their father every minute of his final months but that was not what he wanted do not stop your lives he told them otherwise this disease will have ruined three of us instead of one in this way even as he was dying he showed respect for his children's worlds little wonder that when they sat with him there was a waterfall of affection lots of kisses and jokes and crouching by the side of the bed holding hands whenever people ask me about having children or not having children i never tell them what to do maury said now looking at a photo of his oldest son i simply say there is no experience like having children that's all there is no substitute for it you cannot do it with a friend you cannot do it with a lover if you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way then you should have children so you would do it again i asked i glanced at the photo rob was kissing maury on the forehead and maury was laughing with his eyes closed would i do it again he said to me looking surprised mitch i would not have missed that experience for anything even though he swallowed and put the picture in his lap even though there is a painful price to pay he said because you'll be leaving them because i'll be leaving them soon he pulled his lips together closed his eyes and i watched the first teardrop fall down the side of his cheek and now he whispered you talk me your family i know about your parents i met them years ago at graduation you have a sister too right yes i said older yes older and one brother right i nodded younger younger like me mori said i have a younger brother like you i said he also came to your graduation didn't he i blinked and in my mind i saw us all there 16 years earlier the hot sun the blue robes squinting as we put our arms around each other and posed for instantic photos someone saying one two three what is it maury said noticing my sudden quiet what's on your mind nothing i said changing the subject the truth is i do indeed have a brother a blond-haired hazel-eyed two-year-cyandra brother who looks so unlike me or my dark-haired sister that we used to tease him by claiming strangers had left him as a baby on our doorstep and one day we'd say they're coming back to get you he cried when we said this but we said it just the same he grew up the way many youngest children grow up pampered adored and inwardly tortured he dreamed of being an actor or a singer he reenacted tv shows at the dinner table playing every part his bright smile practically jumping through his lips i was the good student he was the bad i was obedient he broke the rules i stayed away from drugs and alcohol he tried everything you could ingest he moved to europe not long after high school preferring the more casual lifestyle he found there yet he remained the family favorite when he visited home in his wild and funny presence i often felt stiff and conservative as different as we were i reasoned that our fates would shoot in opposite directions once we hit adulthood i was right in all ways but won from the day my uncle uncle died i believed that i would suffer a similar death an untimely disease that would take me out so i worked at a feverish pace and i braced myself for cancer i could feel its breath i knew it was coming i waited for it the way a condemned man waits for the executioner and i was right it came but it missed me it struck my brother the same type of cancer is my uncle the pancreas a rare form and so the youngest of our family with the blonde hair and the hazel eyes had the chemotherapy and the radiation his hair fell out his face went gone as a skeleton it's supposed to be me i thought but my brother was not me and he was not my uncle he was a fighter and had been since his youngest days when we wrestled in the basement and he actually bit through my shoe until i screamed in pain and let him go and so he fought back he battled the disease in spain where he lived with the aid of an experimental drug that was not in still is not available in the united states he flew all over europe for treatments after five years of treatment the drug appeared to chase the cancer into remission that was the good news the bad news was my brother did not want me around not me nor anyone in the family much as we tried to call and visit he held us at bay insisting this fight was something he needed to do by himself months would pass without a word from him messages on his answering machine would go without reply i was ripped with guilt for what i felt i should be doing for him and fueled with anger for his denying us the right to do it so once again i dove into work i work because i could control it i work because work was sensible and responsive and each time i would call my brother's apartment in spain and get the answering machine in speaking in spanish another sign of how far apart we had drifted i would hang up and work some more perhaps this is one reason i was drawn to maury he let me be where my brother would not looking back perhaps maury knew this all along it is a winter in my childhood on a snowpack hill in our suburban neighborhood my brother and i are on the sled him on top me on the bottom i feel his chin on my shoulder and his feet on the backs of my knees the sled rumbles on icy patches beneath us we pick up speed as we descend the hill car yells we see it coming down the street to our left we scream and try to steer away but the runners do not move the driver slams his horn and hits his brakes and we do what all kids do we jump off in our hooded parkas we roll like logs down the cold with snow thinking the next thing to touch us will be the hard rubber of a car tire and we are tingling with fear turning over and over the world upside down right side up upside down and then nothing we stop rolling and catch our breath and wipe the dripping snow from our faces the driver turns down the street wagging his finger we are safe our sled has thudded quietly into a snow bank and our friends are slapping us now saying cool and you could have died i grin at my brother and we are united by childish pride that wasn't so hard we think and we are ready to take on death again the sixth tuesday we talk about emotions i walked past the mountain laurels and the japanese maple up the blue stone steps of mori's house the white rain got her home like a lid over the doorway i rang the bell and was greeted not by connie but by mori's wife charlotte a beautiful gray-haired woman who spoke in a loping voice she was not often at home when i came by she continued working at mit as mori wished and i was surprised this morning to see her mori's having a bit of a hard time today she said she stared over my shoulder for a moment then moved toward the kitchen i'm sorry i said no no he'll be happy to see you she said quickly sure she stopped in the middle of the sentence turning her head slightly listening for something then she continued i'm sure he'll feel better when he knows you're here i lifted up the bags from the mark at my normal food supply i said jokingly and she seemed to smile and fret at the same time there's already so much food he hasn't eaten any from last time this took me by surprise he hasn't eaten any i asked she opened the refrigerator and i saw familiar containers of chicken salad vermicelli vegetables stuffed squash all things i had brought for maury she opened the freezer and there was even more maury can't eat most of this food it's too hard for him to swallow he has to eat soft things in liquid drinks now but he never said anything i said charlotte smiled smiled he doesn't want to hurt your feelings it wouldn't have hurt my feelings i just wanted to help in some way i mean i just wanted to bring him something you are bringing in something he looks forward to your visits he talks about having to do this project with you how he has to concentrate and put the time aside i think it's giving him a good sense of purpose again she gave that far away look the tuning in something from somewhere else i knew maury's nights were becoming difficult that he didn't sleep through them and that meant charlotte often did not sleep through them either sometimes mori would lie away coughing for hours it would take that long to get the flame from his throat there were healthcare workers now staying through the night and all those visitors during the day former students fellow professors meditation teachers tramping in and out of the house on sundays maury had a half a dozen visitors and they were often there when charlotte returned from work she handled it with patients even though all these outsiders were soaking up her precious minutes with mori a sense of purpose she continued yes that's good you know hope so i said i helped put the new food inside the refrigerator the kitchen counter had all kinds of notes messages information medical instructions the table held more pill bottles than ever sell a stone for his asthma eight of them to help him sleep naproxen for infections along with a powdered milk mix and laxatives from down the hall we heard the sound of a door open maybe he's available now let me go check charlotte glanced again at my food and i felt suddenly ashamed all these reminders of things maury would never enjoy the small horrors of his illness were growing and when i finally sat down with mori he was coughing more than usual a dry dusty cough that shook his chest and made his head jerk forward after one violent surge he stopped closed his eyes and took a breath i sat quietly because i thought he was recovering from his exertion is the tape on he said suddenly his eyes still closed yes yes i quickly said pressing down the play and record buttons what i'm doing now he continued his eyes still closed is detaching myself from the experience detaching yourself detaching myself and this is important not just for someone like me who is dying but for someone like you who is perfectly healthy learn to detach he opened his eyes he exhaled you know what the buddhists say don't cling to things because everything is impermanent but wait i said aren't you always talking about experiencing life all the good emotions all the bad ones yes well how can you do that if you're detached you're thinking mitch but detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you on the contrary you let it penetrate you fully that's how you are able to leave it i'm lost take any emotion love for a woman or grief for a loved one or what i'm going through fear and pain from a deadly illness if you hold back on the emotions if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them you can never get to being detached you're too busy being afraid you're afraid of the pain you're afraid of the grief you're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails but by throwing yourself into these emotions by allowing yourself to dive in all the way over your head even you experience them fully and completely you know what pain is you know what love is is you know what grief is and only then can you say all right i have experienced that emotion i recognize that emotion now i need to detach from that emotion for a moment maury stopped and looked me over perhaps to make sure i was getting this right i know you think this is just about dying you said but it's like i keep telling you when you learn how to die you learn how to live more he talked about his most fearful moments when he felt his chest locked in heating surges or when he wasn't sure where his next breath would come from these were horrifying times he said and his first emotions were horror fear anxiety but once he recognized the feel of those emotions their texture their moisture the shiver down the back the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain then he was able to say okay this is fear step away from it step away i thought about how often this was needed in everyday life how we feel lonely sometimes to the point of tears but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship mori's approach was exactly the opposite turn on the faucet wash yourself with the emotion it won't hurt you it will only help if you let the fear inside if you pull it on like a familiar shirt then you can say to yourself all right it's just fear i don't have to let it control me i see it for what it is same for loneliness you let go let the tears flow feel it completely but eventually be able to say all right that was my moment with loneliness i'm not afraid of feeling lonely but now i'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world and i'm going to experience them as well detach more he said again he closed his eyes then coughed then he coughed again then he coughed again more loudly suddenly he was half-choking the congestion in his lungs seemingly teasing him jumping halfway up then dropping back down stealing his breath he was gagging then hacking violently and he shook his hands in front of him with his eyes closed shaking his hands he appeared almost possessed and i felt my forehead break into a sweat i instinctively pulled him forward and slapped the back of his shoulders and he pushed a tissue to his mouth and spit out a wad of phlegm the coughing stopped and mori dropped back into the foam pillows and sucked in air you okay you all right i said trying to hide my fear i'm okay maury whispered raising a shaky finger just wait a minute we sat there quietly until his breathing returned to normal i felt the perspiration on my scalp he asked me to close the window the breeze was making him cold i didn't mention that it was 80 degrees outside finally in a whisper he said i know how i want to die i waited in silence i want to die serenely peacefully not like what just happened and this is where detachment comes in if i die in the middle of a coughing spell like i just had i need to be able to detach from the horror i need to say this is my moment i don't want to leave the world in a state of fright i want to know what's happening accept it get to a peaceful place and let go do you understand i nodded don't let go yet i added quickly maury forced to smile no not yet we still have work to do do you believe in reincarnation i ask perhaps what would you come back as if i had my choice a gazelle a gazelle yes so graceful so fast a gazelle maury smiles at me you think that's strange i study his shrunken frame the loose clothes the socks wrapped feet that rest stiffly on foam rubber cushions unable to move like a prisoner in leg irons i picture a gazelle racing across the desert no i say i don't think that's strange at all the professor part two the more i knew the more so many others knew would not have been the man he was without the years he spent working at a mental hospital just outside washington dc a place with a deceptively peaceful name of chestnut lodge it was one of mori's first jobs after plowing through a master's degree and a phd from the university of chicago having rejected medicine law and business maury had decided the research world would be a place where he could contribute without exploiting others mori was given a grant to observe mental patients and record their treatments while the idea seems common today it was groundbreaking in the early 50s mori saw patients who would scream all day patients who would cry all night patients soiling their underwear patients refusing to eat having to be held down medicated fed intravenously one of the patients a middle-aged woman came out of her room every day and laid face down on the tile floor stayed there for hours as doctors and nurses stepped around her mori watched in horror he took notes which is what he was there to do every day she did the same thing came out in the morning lay on the floor stayed there until the evening talking to no one ignored by everyone it's sad mori he began to sit on the floor with her even lay down alongside her trying to draw her out of her misery misery eventually he got her to sit up and even to return to her room what she mostly wanted he learned was the same thing many people want someone to notice she was there mori worked at chestnut lodge for five years although it wasn't encouraged he befriended some of the patients including a woman who joked with him about how lucky she was to be there because my husband is rich so he can afford it can you imagine if i had to be in one of those cheap mental hospitals another woman who would spit it everyone else took to maury and called him her friend they talked each day and the staff was at least encouraged that someone had gotten through to her but one day she ran away and mori was asked to help bring her back they tracked her down in a nearby store hiding in the back and when maury went in she burned an angry look at him so you're one of them too she snarled one of who my jailers mori observed that most of the patients there had been rejected and ignored in their lives made to feel that they didn't exist they also missed compassion something the staff ran out of quickly and many of these patients were well off from rich families so their wealth did not buy them happiness or contentment it was a lesson he never forgot i used to tease mori that he was stuck in the 60s he would answer that the 60s weren't so bad compared to the times we lived in now he came to brandeis after his work in the mental health field just before the 60s began within a few years the campus became a hotbed for cultural revolution drugs sex race vietnam protests abby hoffman attended brandeis so did jerry reuben and angela davis maury had many of the radical students in his classes that was partly because instead of simply teaching the sociology faculty got involved involved it was fiercely anti-war for example when the professors learned that students who did not maintain a certain grade point average could lose their deferments and be drafted they decided not to give any grades when the administration said if you don't give these students grades they will all fail mori had a solution let's give them all a's and they did just as the 60s opened up the campus it also opened up the staff and morris department from the jeans and sandals they now wore when working to their view of the classroom as a living breathing place they chose discussions over lectures experience over theory they sent students to the deep south for civil rights projects and to the inner city for field work they went to washington for protest marches and maury often rode the buses with his students on one trip he watched with gentle amusement as women in flowing skirts and love beats put flowers and soldiers guns then sat on the lawn holding hands trying to levitate the pentagon they didn't move it he later recalled but it was a nice try one time a group of black students took over ford hall on the brandeis campus draping it in a banner that read malcolm x university fort hall had chemistry labs and some administration officials worried that these radicals were making bombs in the basement maury knew better he saw right to the core of the problem which was human beings wanting to feel that they mattered the standoff lasted for weeks and it might have gone on even longer if mori hadn't been walking by the building when one of the protesters recognized him as a favorite teacher and yelled for him to come in through the window an hour later mori crawled out through the window with a list of what the protesters wanted he took the list of the university president and the situation was diffused mori always made good peace at brandeis he taught classes about social psychology mental illness and health group process they were light on what you'd now call career skills and heavy on personal development and because of this business and law students today might look at maury as foolishly naive about his contributions how much money did his students go on to make how many big time cases did they win then again how many business or law students ever visit their old professors once they leave maury students did that all the time and in his final months they came back to him hundreds of them from boston new york california london and switzerland from corporate offices and inner city school programs they called they wrote they drove hundreds of miles for a visit a word a smile i've never had another teacher like you they all said as my visits with mori go on i begin to read about death underscore cultures view the final passage there is a tribe in the north american arctic for example who believe that all things on earth have a soul that exists in a miniature form of the body that holds it so that a deer has a tiny deer inside it and a man has a tiny man inside him when the large bean dies the tiny form lives on it can slide into something being born nearby or it can go to a temporary resting place in the sky in the belly of a great feminine spirit where it waits until the moon can send it back to earth sometimes they say the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky that is why we have moonless nights but in the end the moon always always returns as do we all that is what they believe the seventh tuesday we talk about the fear of aging mori lost his battle someone was now wiping his behind he faced this with typically brave acceptance no longer able to reach behind him when he used to commode he informed connie of his latest limitation would you be embarrassed to do it for me she said no i found it typical that he asked her first it took some getting used to maury admitted because it was in a way complete surrender to the disease the most personal and basic things had now been taken from him going to the bathroom wiping his nose washing his private parts with the exception of breathing and swallowing his food he was dependent on others for nearly everything i asked maury how he managed to stay positive through that mitch it's funny he said i'm an independent person so my inclination was to fight all of this being helped from the car having someone else dress me i felt a little ashamed because our culture tells us we should be ashamed if we can't wipe our own behind but then i figured forget what the culture says i have ignored the culture much of my life i am not going to be ashamed what's the big deal and you know what the strangest thing what's that i began to enjoy my dependency now i enjoy when they turn me over on my side and rub cream on my behind so i don't get sores or when they wipe my brow or they massage my legs i revel in it close my eyes and soak it up and it seems very familiar to me it's like going back to being a child again someone debate you someone to lift you someone can wipe you we all know how to be a child it's inside all of us for me it's just remembering how to enjoy it the truth is when our mothers held us rocked us stroked our heads none of us ever got enough of that we all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of unconditional love uncond unconditional attention most of us didn't get enough i know i didn't i looked at maury and i suddenly knew why he so enjoyed my leaning over and adjusting his microphone or flussing with the pillows or wiping his eyes human touch at 78 he was giving as an adult and taking as a child later that day we talked about aging or maybe one should say the fear of aging another of the issues on my what's bugging my generation list on my ride from the boston airport i had counted the billboards that featured young and beautiful people there was a handsome young man in a cowboy hat smoking a cigarette two beautiful young women smiling over a shampoo bottle a sultry looking teenager with her jeans unsnapped and a sexy woman in a black velvet dress next to a man in a tuxedo the two of them snuggling a glass of scotch not once did i see anyone who would pass for over 35 i told maury i was already feeling over the hill much as i tried desperately to stay on top of it i worked out constantly watch what i ate check my hairline in the mirror i had gone from being proud to say my age because of all i had done so young to not bringing it up for fear i was getting too close to 40 and therefore professional oblivion mori had aging in better perspective all this emphasis on youth i don't buy it he said listen i know what a misery being young can be so don't tell me it's so great all these kids who came to me with their struggles their strife their feelings of inadequacy their sense that life was miserable so bad they wanted to kill themselves and in addition to all the miseries the young are not wise they have very little understanding about life who wants to live every day when you don't know what's going on when people are manipulating you telling you to buy this perfume and you'll be beautiful or this pair of jeans and you'll be sexy and you believe them it's such nonsense weren't you ever afraid to grow old i asked mitch i embrace aging embrace it it's very simple as you grow you learn more if you stayed at 22 you'd always be as ignorant as you were 22. aging is not just decay you know it's growth it's more than the negative that you're going to die it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die and that you live a better life because of it yes i said but if aging were so valuable why do people always say oh if i were young again you never hear people say i wish i were 65. he smiled you know what that reflects unsatisfied lives unfulfilled lives lives that haven't found meaning because if you found meaning in your life you don't want to go back you want to go forward you want to see more do more you can't wait until 65. listen you should know something all younger people should know something if you're always battling against getting older you're always going to be unhappy because it will happen anyhow and mitch he lowered his voice the fact is you are going to die eventually i nodded it won't matter what you tell yourself i know but hopefully he said not for a long long time he closed his eyes with a peaceful look then asked me to adjust the pillows behind his head his body needed constant adjustment to stay comfortable it was propped in the chair with white pillows yellow foam and blue towels at a quick glance it seemed as if maury were being packed for shipping thank you he whispered as i move the pillows no problem i said mitch what are you thinking i paused before answering okay i said i'm wondering how you don't end the younger healthy people oh i guess i do he closed his eyes i envy them being able to go to the health club or go for a swim or dance mostly for dancing but then he comes to me i feel it and then i let it go remember what i said about detachment let it go tell yourself that's envy i'm going to separate from it now and walk away he coughed a long scratchy cough and he pushed a tissue to his mouth and spit weekly into it sitting there i felt so much stronger than he ridiculously so as if i could lift him and toss him over my shoulder like a sack of flour i was embarrassed by this superiority because i did not feel superior to him in any other way how do you keep from envying what me he smiled mitch it is impossible for the old not to envy the young but the issue is to accept who you are in revel in that this is your time to be in your 30s i had my time to be in my 30s and now is my time to be 78. you have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now looking back makes you competitive and age is not a competitive issue he exhaled and lowered his eyes as if to watch his breath scatter into the air the truth is part of me is every age i'm a three-year-old i'm a five-year-old i'm a 37 year old i'm a 50 year old i've been through all of them and i know what it's like i delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child i delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to be a wise old man think of all i can be i am every age up to my own do you understand i nodded how can i be envious of where you are when i've been there myself fates becomes many a species one alone jeopardizes itself w h auden moria's favorite poet the eighth tuesday we talk about money i held up the newspaper so that maury could see it i don't want my tombstone to read i never owned a network maury laughed then shook his head the morning sun was coming through the window behind him falling on the pink flowers of the hibiscus plant that sat on the sill the quote was from ted turner the billionaire media mogul founder of cnn who had been lamenting his inability to snatch up the cbs network in a corporate mega deal i had brought the story to maury this morning because i wondered if turner ever found himself in my old professor's position his breath disappearing his body turning to stone his days being crossed off the calendar one by one would he really be crying over owning a network it's all part of the same problem mitch mori said we put our values in the wrong things and it leads to very disillusioned lives i think we should talk about that maury was focused there were good days and bad days now he was having a good day the night before he had been entertained by a local a cappella group that had come to the house to perform and he relayed the story excitedly as if the ink spots themselves had dropped by for a visit mori's love for music was strong even before he got sick but now it was so intense it moved into tears he would listen to opera sometimes at night closing his eyes riding along with the magnificent voices as they dipped and sword you should have heard this group last night mitch such a sound maury had always been taken with simple pleasures singing laughing dancing now more than ever material things held little or no significance when people die you always hear the expression you can take it with you mori seemed to know that a long time ago we've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country maury side do you know how they brainwash people they repeat something over and over and that's what we do in this country owning things is good more money is good more property is good more commercialism is good more is good more is good we repeat it and have it repeated to us over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise the average person is so fogged up by all this he has no perspective on what's really important anymore wherever i went in my life i met people wanting to gobble up something new gobble up a new car gobble up a new piece of property gobble up the latest toy and then they wanted to tell you about it guess what i got guess what i got you know how i always interpreted that these were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes they were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back but it never works you can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship money is not a substitute for tenderness and power is not a substitute for tenderness i can tell you as i'm sitting here dying when you must need it neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for no matter how much of them you have i glanced around around mori study it was the same today as it had been the first day i arrived the books held their same places on the shelves the papers cluttered the same old desk the outside rooms had not been improved or upgraded in fact mori really hadn't bought anything new except medical equipment in a long long time maybe years the day he learned that he was terminally ill was the day he lost interest in his purchasing power so the tv was the same old model the car that charlotte drove was the same old model the dishes and the silverware and the towels all the same and yet the house had changed so drastically it had filled with love and teaching and communication it had filled with friendship and family and honesty and tears it had filled with colleagues and students and meditation teachers and therapists and nurses and cappella groups it had become in a very real way a wealthy home even though maury's bank account was rapidly depleting there's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need morey said you need food you want a chocolate sundae you have to be honest with yourself you don't need the latest sports car you don't need the biggest house the truth is you don't get satisfaction from those things you know what really gives you satisfaction what offering others what you have to give you sound like a boy scout i don't mean money mitch i mean your time your concern your storytelling it's not so hard there's a senior center that opened near here dozens of elderly people come there every day if you're a young man or young woman and you have a skill you are asked to come and teach it say you know computers you come there and teach them computers you are very welcome there and they are very grateful this is how you start to get respect by offering something that you have there are plenty of places to do this you don't need to have a big talent there are lonely people in hospitals and shelters who only want some companionship you play cards with a lonely older man and you find new respect for yourself because you are needed remember what i said about finding a meaningful life i wrote it down but now i can recite it devote yourself to loving others devote yourself to your community around you and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning you notice he added grinning there's nothing in there about a salary i jotted some of the things maury was saying on a yellow pad i did this mostly because i didn't want him to see my eyes to know what i was thinking that i had been for much of my life since graduation pursuing these very things he had been railing against bigger toys nicer house because i worked among rich and famous athletes i convinced myself that my needs were realistic my greed inconsequential compared to theirs this was a smoke screen maury made that obvious mitch if you're trying to show off for people at the top forget it they will look down at you anyhow and if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom forget it they will only envy you status will get you nowhere only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone he paused then looked at me i'm dying right yes why do you think it's so important for me to hear other people's problems don't i have enough pain and suffering of my own of course i do but getting to other people is what makes me feel alive not my car or my house not what i look like in the mirror when i give my time when i can make someone smile after they were feeling sad it's as close to healthy as i ever feel do the kinds of things that come from the heart when you do you won't be dissatisfied you won't be envious you won't be longing for somebody else's things on the contrary you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back he coughed and reached for the small bell that lay on the chair he had to poke a few times at it and i finally picked it up and put it in his hand thank you he whispered he shook it weekly trying to get connie's attention this ted turner guy maury said he couldn't think of anything else for his tombstone each night when i go to sleep i die and the next morning when i wake up i am reborn mahatma gandhi the 9th tuesday we talk about how love goes on the leaves have begun to change color turning the ride through west newton into a portrait of gold and rust back in detroit the labor war had stagnated with each side accusing the other of failing to communicate the stories on the tv news were just as depressing in rural kentucky three men threw pieces of a tombstone off a bridge smashing the windshield of a passing car killing a teenage girl who was traveling with her family on a religious pilgrimage in california the oj simpson trial was heading toward a conclusion and the whole country seemed to be obsessed even in airports there were hanging tv sets tuned to cnn so that you could get an oj update as you made your way to a gate i had tried calling my brother in spain several times i left messages saying that i really wanted to talk to him but i've been doing a lot of thinking about us a few weeks later i got back a short message saying everything was okay but he was sorry he really didn't feel like talking about being sick for my old professor it was not the talk of being sick but the being sick itself that was syncing him since my last visit a nurse had inserted a catheter into his penis which drew the urine out through a tube and into a bag that sat at the foot of his chair his legs needed constant tending he could still feel pain even though he could not move them another one of als screw a little ironies and unless his feet dangled just the right number of inches off the foam pads it felt as if someone were poking him with a fork in the middle of conversations morey would have to ask visitors to lift his foot and move it just an inch or to adjust his head so that it fit more easily into the palm of the colored pillows can you imagine being unable to move your own head with each visit maury seemed to be melting into his chair his spine taking on its shape still every morning he insisted on being lifted from his bed and willed to his study deposited there among his books and papers and the hibiscus plant on the windowsill in typical fashion he found something philosophical in this i sum it up in my newest aphorism he said let me hear it when you're in bed you're dead he smiled only maury could smile at something like that he had been getting calls from the nightline people and from ted koppel himself they want to come and do another show with me he said but they say they want to wait until what you're on your last breath maybe anyhow i'm not so far away don't say that i'm sorry that bugs me that they want to wait until you wither it bugs you because you look out for me he smiled mitch maybe they are using me for a little drama that's okay maybe i'm using them too they helped me get my message to millions of people i couldn't do that without them right so it's a compromise he coughed which turned into a long drawn-out gargle ending with another glob into a crushed tissue anyhow mori said i told them they better not wait too long because my voice won't be there once this thing hits my lungs talking may become impossible i can't speak for too long without needing a rest now i've already canceled a lot of the people who want to see me mitch there are so many but i'm too fatigued if i can't give them the right attention i can't help them i looked at the tape recorder feeling guilty as if i were stealing what was left of his precious speaking time should we skip it i asked will it make you too tired maury shut his eyes and shook his head he seemed to be waiting for some silent pain to pass no he finally said you and i have to go on this is our last thesis together you know our last thesis we want to get it right i thought about our first thesis together in college it was maury's idea of course he told me i was good enough to write an honors project something i had never considered now here we were doing the same thing once more starting with an idea dying man talks to living man tells him what he should know this time i was in less of a hurry to finish someone asked me an interesting question yesterday maury said now looking over my shoulder at the wall hanging behind me a quilt of hopeful messages that friends had stitched for him on his 70th birthday each patch on the quilt had a different message stay the course the best is yet to be always a no one in mental health what was the question i asked if i worried about being forgotten after i died died well do you i don't think i will be i've got so many people who have been involved with me in close intimate ways and love is how you stay alive even after you are gone sounds like a song lyric dash love is how you stay alive maury chuckled maybe but mitch all this talk that we're doing do you ever hear my voice sometimes when you're back home when you're all alone maybe on the plane maybe in your car yes i admitted then you will not forget me after i'm gone think of my voice and i'll be there think of your voice and if you want to cry a little it's okay mari he had wanted to make me cry since i was a freshman one of these days i'm gonna get to you he would say yeah yeah i would answer i decided what i wanted on my tombstone he said i don't want to hear about tombstones why they make you nervous i shrugged we can forget it no go ahead what did you decide maury popped his lips i was thinking of this a teacher to the last he waited while i absorbed it a teacher to the last good he said yes i said very good i came to love the way mori lit up when i entered the room he did this for many people i know but it was a special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique ah it's my buddy he would say when he saw me in that foggy high-pitched voice and it didn't stop with the greeting when maury was with you he was really with you he left you straight in the eye and he listened as if you were the only person in the world how much better would people get along if their first encounter each day were like this instead of a grumble from a waitress or a bus driver or a boss i believe in being fully present maury said that means you should be with the person you're with when i'm talking to you now mitch i try to keep focused only on what is going on between us i am not thinking about something we said last week i am not thinking of what's coming up this friday i am not thinking about doing another couple show or about what medications i'm taking i'm talking to you i'm thinking about you i remembered how he used to teach this idea in the group process class back at brandeis i had scoffed back then thinking this was hardly a lesson plan for a university course learning to pay attention how important could that be i now know it is more important than almost everything they taught us in college more emotion from my hand and as i gave it to him i felt a surge of guilt here was a man who if he wanted could spend every waking moment in self-pity feeling his body for decay counting his breaths so many people with far smaller problems are so self-absorbed their eyes glaze over if you speak for more than 30 seconds they already have something else in mind a friend to call a fax to send a lover they're daydreaming about they only snap back to full attention when you finish talking at which point they say aha or yeah really and fake their way back to the moment part of the problem niche is that everyone is in such a hurry mori said people haven't found meaning in their lives so they're running all the time looking for it they think the next car the next house the next job then they find those things are empty too and they keep running once you start running i said it's hard to slow yourself down not so hard he said shaking his head do you know what i do when someone wants to get ahead of me in traffic when i used to be able to drive i would raise my hand he tried to do this now but the hand lifted weakly only six inches i would raise my hand as if i was going to make a negative gesture and then i would wave and smile instead of giving them the finger you let them go and you smile you know what a lot of times they smile back the truth is i don't have to be in that much of a hurry with my car i would rather put my energies into people he did this better than anyone i'd ever known those who sat with him saw his eyes go moist when they spoke about something horrible or crinkled in delight when they told him a really bad joke he was always ready to openly display the emotions so often missing from my baby boomer generation we are great at small talk what do you do where do you live but really listening to someone without trying to sell them something pick them up recruit them or get some kind of status in return how often do we get this anymore i believe many visitors in the last few months of maury's life were drawn not because of the attention they wanted to pay to him but because of the attention he paid to them despite his personal pain and decay this little old man listened the way they always wanted someone to listen i told him he was the father everyone wishes they had well he said closing his eyes eyes i have some experience in that area the last time maury saw his own father was in a city moored charlie schwartz was a quiet man who liked to read his newspaper alone under a street lamp on tremont avenue in the bronx every night when maury was little charlie would go for a walk after dinner he was a small russian man with a ruddy complexion and a full head of greyish hair maury and his brother david would look out the window and see him leaning against the lamppost and maury wished he would come inside and talk to them but he rarely did nor did he tuck them in nor kiss them goodnight mori always swore he would do these things for his own children if he ever had any and years later when he had them he did meanwhile as maury raised his own children charlie was still living in the bronx he still took that walk he still read the paper one night he went outside after dinner a few blocks from home he was accosted by two robbers give us your money one said pulling a gun frightened charlie threw down his wallet and began to run he ran through the streets and kept running until he reached the steps of a relative's house where he collapsed on the porch heart attack he died that night maury was called to identify the body he flew to new york and went to the morgue he was taken downstairs to the cold room where the corpses were kept is this your father the attendant asked mori looked at the body behind the glass the body of the man who had scolded him and molded him and taught him to work who had been quiet when mori wanted him to speak who had told mori to swallow his memories of his mother when he wanted to share them with the world he nodded and he walked away the horror of the room he would later say sucked all other functions out of him he did not cry until days later still his father's death helped prepare maury for his own this much he knew there would be lots of holding and kissing and talking and laughter and no goodbyes left unsaid all the things he missed with his father and his mother when the final moment came maury wanted his loved ones around him knowing what was happening no one would get a phone call or a telegram or have to look through a glass window in some cold and foreign basement in the south american rainforest there is a tribe called the desana who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures every birth must therefore engender a death and every death bring forth another birth this way the energy of the world remains complete when they hunt for food the dessana know that the animals they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well but that hole will be filled they believe by the souls of the deaths and hunters when they die were there no men dying there would be no birds or fish being born i like this idea mori likes it too the closer he gets to goodbye the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest what we take we must replenish it's only fair he says the 10th tuesday we talk about marriage i brought a visitor to meet maury my wife he had been asking me since the first day i came when do i meet janine what are you bringing her i'd always had excuses until a few days earlier when i called his house to see how he was doing it took a while for maury to get to the receiver and when he did i could hear the fumbling as someone held it to his ear he could no longer lift a phone by himself hi he you doing okay coach i heard him exhale mitch your coach isn't having such a great day his sleeping time was getting worse he needed oxygen almost nightly now and his coughing spells had become frightening one cough could last an hour and he never knew if he'd be able to stop he always said he would die when the disease got his lungs i shuddered when i thought how close death was i'll see you on tuesday i said you'll have a better day then mitch yeah is your wife there with you she was sitting next to me put her on i want to hear her voice now i am married to a woman blessed with far more intuitive kindness than one although she had never met maury she took the phone i would have shaken my head and whispered i'm not here i'm not here and in a minute she was connecting with my old professor as if they'd known each other since college i sensed this even though all i heard on my end was aha mitch told me oh thank you when she hung up she said i'm coming next trip and that was that now we sat in his office surrounding him in his recliner mori by his own admission was a harmless flirt and while he often had to stop for coughing or to use the commode he seemed to find new reserves of energy with janine in the room he looked at photos from our wedding which janine had brought along you are from detroit mari said yes janine said i taught in detroit for one year in the late 40s i remember a funny story about that he stopped to blow his nose when he fumbled with the tissue i held it in place and he blew weakly into it i squeezed it lightly against his nostrils then pulled it off like a mother does to a child in a car seat thank you mitch he looked at janine my helper this one is janine smiled anyhow my story there were a bunch of sociologists at the university and we used to play poker with other staff members including this guy who was a surgeon one night after the game he said maury i want to come see you work i said fine so he came to one of my classes and watched me teach after the class was over he said all right now how would you like to see me work i have an operation tonight i wanted to return the favor so i said okay he took me up to the hospital he said scrub down put on a mask and get into a gown and next thing i knew i was right next to him at the operating table there was this woman the patient on the table naked from the waist down and he took a knife and went zipped just like that well maury lifted a finger and spun it around i started to go like this i'm about to faint all the blood yuck the nurse next to me said what's the matter doctor and i said i'm no damn doctor get me out of here we laughed and more laughed too as hard as he could with his limited breathing it was the first time in weeks that i could recall in telling a story like this how strange i thought that he nearly fainted once from watching someone else's illness and now he was so able to endure his own connie knocked on the door and said that maury's lunch was ready it was not the carrot soup and vegetable cakes and greek pasta i had brought that morning from bread and circus although i tried to buy the softest of foods now they were still beyond mori's limited strength to chew and swallow he was eating mostly liquid supplements with perhaps a brand muffin tossed in until it was mushy and easily digested charlotte would puree almost everything in a blender now he was taking food through a straw i still shopped every week and walked in with bags to show him but it was more for the look on his face than anything else when i opened the refrigerator i would see an overflow of containers i guess i was hoping that one day we would go back to eating a real lunch together and i could watch the sloppy way in which he talked while chewing the food spilling happily out of his mouth this was a foolish hope so janine mori said she smiled you are lovely give me your hand she did mitch says that you're a professional singer yes janine said he says you're great oh she laughed no he just says that maury raised his eyebrows will you sing something for me now i have heard people ask this of janine for almost as long as i have known her when people find out you sing for a living they always say sing something for us shy about her talent and a perfectionist about conditions janine never did she would politely decline which is what i expected now which is when she began to sing the very thought of you and i forget to do the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do it was a 1930 standard written by ray noble and janine sang it sweetly looking straight at mori i was amazed once again at his ability to draw emotion from people who otherwise kept it locked away mori closed his eyes to absorb the notes as my wife's loving voice filled the room a crescent smile appeared on his face and while his body was stiff as a sandbag you could almost see him dancing inside it i see her face in every flower your eyes and stars above it's just the thought of you the very thought of you my love when she finished mori opened his eyes and tears rolled down his cheeks in all the years i have listened to my wife singh i never heard her the way he did at that moment marriage almost everyone i knew had a problem with it some had problems getting into it some had problems getting out my generation seemed to struggle with the commitment as if it were an alligator from some murky swamp i had gotten used to attending weddings congratulating the couple and feeling only mild surprise when i saw the groom a few years later sitting in a restaurant with a younger woman whom he introduced as a friend you know i'm separated from soan so he would say why do we have such problems i asked mori about this having waited seven years before i proposed to janine i wondered if people my age were being more careful than those who came before us or simply more selfish well i feel sorry for your generation maury said in this culture it's so important to find a loving relationship with someone because so much of the culture does not give you that but the poor kids today either they're too selfish to take part in a real loving relationship or they rush into marriage and then six months later they get divorced they don't know what they want in a partner they don't know who they are themselves so how can they know who they're marrying he sighed mori had counseled so many unhappy lovers in his years as a professor it's sad because a loved one is so important you realize that especially when you're in a time like i am when you're not doing so well friends are great but friends are not going to be here on a night when you're coughing and can't sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you comfort you try to be helpful charlotte and maury who met his students had been married 44 years i watched them together now when she would remind him of his medication or come in and stroke his neck or talk about one of their sons they worked as a team often needing no more than a silent glance to understand what the other was thinking charlotte was a private person different from maury but i knew how much he respected her because sometimes when we spoke he would say charlotte might be uncomfortable with me revealing that and he would end the conversation it was the only time rory held anything back i've learned this much about marriage he said now you get tested you find out who you are who the other person is and how you accommodate or don't is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going to work maury smiled things are not that simple mitch i know still he said there are a few rules i know to be true about love and marriage if you don't respect the other person you're gonna have a lot of trouble if you don't know how to compromise you're gonna have a lot of trouble if you can't talk openly about what goes on between you you're gonna have a lot of trouble and if you don't have a common set of values in life you're gonna have a lot of trouble your values must be alike and the biggest one of those values mitch yes your belief in the importance of your marriage he sniffed then closed his eyes for a moment personally he sighed his eyes still closed i think marriage is a very important thing to do and you're missing a hell of a lot if you don't try it he ended the subject by quoting the poem he believed in like a prayer love each other or perish okay question i say to mori his bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest which rises and falls with each labored breath what's the question the question lie says remember the book of job from the bible right job is a good mare but god makes him suffer to test his faith takes away everything lie has his house his money his family his health makes him sick to test his faith right to test his faith so i'm wondering what are you wondering what you think about that maury cost violently his hands quiver as he drops them by his side i think he says smiling got over did it the 11th tuesday we talk about our culture hit him harder i slapped maurice back harder i slapped him again near his shoulders now down lower mori dressed in pajama bottoms lay in bed on his side his head flush against the pillow his mouth open the physical therapist was showing me how to bang lose the poison in his lungs which he needed done regularly now to keep it from solidifying to keep him breathing i always knew he wanted to hit me maury gasped yeah i joked as i wrapped my fist against the alabaster skin of his back this is where the bu gave me sophomore year whack we all laughed a nervous laughter that comes when the devil is within your shot it would have been cute this little scene where it not what we all knew it was the final calisthenics before death maury's disease was now dangerously close to a surrender spot his lungs he had been predicting he would die from choking and i could not imagine a more terrible way to go sometimes he would close his eyes and try to draw the air up into his mouth and nostrils and it seemed as if he were trying to lift an anchor outside it was jacket weather early october the leaves clumped in piles on the lawns around west newton maury's physical therapist had come earlier in the day and i usually excuse myself when nurses or specialists had business with him but as the weeks passed and our time ran down i was increasingly less self-conscious about the physical embarrassment i wanted to be there i wanted to observe everything this was not like me but then neither were a lot of things that had happened these last few months in maury's house so i watched the therapist work on maury in the bed pounding the back of his ribs asking if he could feel the congestion loosening within him and when she took a break she asked if i wanted to try it i said yes maury his face on the pillow gave a little smile not too hard he said i'm an old man i drummed on his back and sides moving around as she instructed i hated the idea of maurice lying in bed under any circumstances his last aphorism when you're in bed you're dead rang in my ears and curled on his side he was so small so withered it was more a boy's body than a man's i saw the paleness of his skin the stray white hairs the way his arms hung limp and helpless i thought about how much time we spend trying to shape our bodies lifting weights crunching sit-ups and in the end nature takes it away from us anyhow beneath my fingers i felt the loose flesh around maury's bones and i thumped him hard as instructed the truth is i was pounding on his back when i wanted to be hitting the walls mitch maury guessed his voice jumpy as a jackhammer as i pounded on him aha when did i give you a v maury believed in the inherent good of people but he also saw what they could become people are only mean when they're threatened he said later that day and that's what our culture does that's what our economy does even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened because they worry about losing them and when you get threatened you start looking out only for yourself you start making money of god it is all part of this culture he exhaled which is why i don't buy into it i nodded at him and squeezed his hand we held hands regularly now this was another change for me things that before would have made me embarrassed or squeamish were now routinely handled the catheter bag connected to the tube inside him and filled with greenish waste fluid lay by my foot near the leg of his chair a few months earlier it might have disgusted me it was inconsequential now so was the smell of the room after maury had used the commode he did not have the luxury of moving from place to place of closing a bathroom door behind him spraying some air freshener when he left there was his bed there was his chair and that was his life if my life were squeezed into such a thimble i doubt i could make it smell any better here's what i mean by building your own little subculture maury said i don't mean you disregard every rule of your community i don't go around naked for example i don't run through red lights the little things i can obey but the big things how we think what we value those you must choose yourself you can't let anyone or any society determine those for you take my condition the things i am supposed to be embarrassed about now not being able to walk not being able to wipe my ass waking up some mornings wanting to cry there is nothing innately embarrassing or shaming about them it's the same for women not being thin enough or men not being rich enough it's just what our culture would have you believe don't believe it i asked maury why he hadn't moved somewhere else when he was younger where i don't know south america new guinea someplace not as selfish as america every society has its own problems maury said lifting his eyebrows the closest he could come to a shrug the way to do it i think isn't to run away you have to work at creating your own culture look no matter where you live the biggest defect we human beings have is our short-sightedness we don't see what we could be we should be looking at our potential stretching ourselves into everything we can become but if you're surrounded by people who say i want my now you end up with a few people with everything in the military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it maury looked over my shoulder to the far window sometimes you could hear a passing truck or a whip of the wind he gazed for a moment at his neighbor's houses then continued the problem mitch is that we don't believe we are as much alike as we are whites and blacks catholics and protestants men and women if we saw each other as more alike we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world and to care about that family the way we care about our own but believe me when you are dying you see it is true we all have the same beginning birth and we all have the same and death so how different can we be invest in the human family invest in people build a little community of those you love and who love you he squeezed my hand gently i squeezed back harder and like that carnival contest where you bang a hammer and watch the disc rise up the pole i could almost see my body heat rise up morey's chest and neck into his cheeks and eyes he smiled in the beginning of life when we are infants we need others to survive right and at the end of life when you get like me you need others to survive right his voice dropped to a whisper but here's the secret in between we need others as well later that afternoon connie and i went into the bedroom to watch the oj simpson verdict it was a test scene as the principal's all turn to face the jury simpson in his blue suit surrounded by a small army of lawyers the prosecutors wanted him behind bars just a few feet away when the foreman read the verdict not guilty connie shrieked oh my god we watched as simpson hugged his lawyers we listen as the commentators try to explain what it all meant we saw crowds of black celebrating in the streets outside the courthouse and crowds of whites sitting stunned inside restaurants the decision was being hailed as momentous even though murders take place every day connie went out in the hall she had seen enough i heard the door to mori steady close i stared at the tv set everyone in the world is watching this thing i told myself then from the other room i heard the ruffling of maurice being lifted from his chair and i smiled as the trial of the century reached its dramatic conclusion my old professor was sitting on the toilet it is 1979 a basketball game in the brandeis gym the team is doing well and the student section begins at chant we're number one we're number one maury is sitting nearby he is puzzled by the cheer at one point in the midst of we're number one he rises and yells what's wrong with being number two the students look at him they stop chanting he sits down smiling and triumphant the audio visual part 3 the nightline crew came back for its third and final visit the whole tenor of the thing was different now less like an interview more like a sad farewell ted koppel had called several times before coming up and he had asked mori do you think you can handle it maury wasn't sure he could i'm tired all the time now ted and i'm choking a lot if i can't say something will you say it for me couple said sure and then the normally stoic anchor added this if you don't want to do it maury it's okay i'll come up and say goodbye anyhow later maury would bring mischievously and say i'm getting to him and he was couple now referred to mori as a friend my old professor had even coaxed compassion out of the television business for the interview which took place on a friday afternoon maury wore the same shirt he had on the day before he changed shirts only every other day at this point and this was not the other day so why break routine unlike the previous two couple short session sessions this one was conducted entirely within more study where maury had become a prisoner of his chair couple who kissed my old professor when he first saw him now had to squeeze in alongside the bookcase in order to be seen in the camera's lens before they started kappa asked about the disease's progression how bad is it mori maury weakly lifted a hand halfway up his belly this was as far as he could go couple had his answer the camera rolled the third and final interview couple asked if mori was more afraid now that death was near mori said no to tell the truth he was less afraid he said he was letting go of some of the outside world not having the newspaper read to him as much not paying as much attention to mail instead listening more to music and watching the leaves change color through his window there were other people who suffered from als mori knew some of them famous such as stephen hawking the brilliant physicist and author of a brief history of time he lived with a hole in his throat spoke through a computer synthesizer typed words by batting his eyes as a sensor picked up the movement this was admirable but it was not the way mori wanted to live he told koppel he knew when it would be time to say goodbye for me ted living means i can be responsive to the other person it means i can show my emotions and my feelings talk to them feel with them he exhaled when that is gone mori is gone they talk like friends as he had in the previous two interviews couple asked about the oldest white test hoping perhaps for a humorous response but mori was too tired even to grin he shook his head when i sit on the commode i can no longer sit up straight i'm listening all the time so they have to hold me when i'm done they have to wipe me that is how far it's gotten he told koppel he wanted to die with serenity he shared his latest aphorism don't let go too soon but don't hang on too long couple nodded painfully only six months had passed between the first nightline show and this one but maury schwartz was clearly a collapsed form he had decayed before a national tv audience a mini-series of a death but as his body rotted his character shone even more brightly toward the end of the interview the camera zoomed in on maury koppel was not even in the picture only his voice was heard from outside it and the anchor asked if my old professor had anything he wanted to say to the millions of people he had touched although he did not mean it this way i couldn't help but think of a condemned man being asked for his final words be compassionate more he whispered and take responsibility for each other if we only learn those lessons this world would be so much better a place he took a breath then added his mantra love each other or die the interview was ended but for some reason the cameraman left the film rolling and a final scene was caught on tape you did a good job koppel said maury smiled weekly i gave you what i had he whispered you always do ted this disease is knocking at my spirit but it will not get my spirit it'll get my body it will not get my spirit couple was near tears you done good you think so maury rolled his eyes toward the ceiling i'm bargaining with him up there now i'm asking him do i get to be one of the angels it was the first time mori admitted talking to god the 12th tuesday we talk about forgiveness forgive yourself before you die then forgive others this was a few days after the nightline interview the sky was rainy and dark and mori was beneath a blanket i sat at the far end of his chair holding his bare feet they were calloused and curled and his toenails were yellow i had a small jar of lotion and i squeezed him into my hands and began to massage his ankles it was another of the things i had watched his helpers do for months and now in an attempt to hold on to what i could have him i had volunteered to do it myself the disease had left mori without the ability even to wiggle his toes yet he could still feel pain and massages helped relieve it also of course more liked being held and touched and at this point anything i could do to make him happy i was going to do mitch he said returning to the subject of forgiveness there is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness these things decide dash these things i so regret in my life pride vanity why do we do the things we do the importance of forgiving was my question i had seen those movies where the patriarch of the family is on his deathbed and he calls for his estranged son so that he can make peace before he goes i wondered if maury had any of that inside him a suddenly to say i'm sorry before he died maury nodded do you see that sculpture he tilted his head toward a bust that sat high on a shelf against the far wall of his office i had never really noticed it before cast in bronze it was the face of a man in his early 40s wearing a necktie a tuft of hair falling across his forehead that's me mori said a friend of mine sculpted that maybe 30 years ago his name was norman we used to spend so much time together we went swimming we took rides to new york he had me over to his house in cambridge and he sculpted that busted me down in his basement it took several weeks to do it but he really wanted to get it right i studied the face how strange to see a three-dimensional maury so healthy so young watching over us as we spoke even in bronze he had a whimsical look and i thought this friend had sculpted a little spirit as well well here's the sad part of the story maury said norman and his wife moved away to chicago a little while later my wife charlotte had to have a pretty serious operation norman and his wife never got in touch with us i know they knew about it charlotte and i were very hurt because they never called to see how she was so we dropped the relationship over the years i met norman a few times and he always tried to reconcile but i didn't accept it i wasn't satisfied with his explanation i was prideful i shrugged him off his voice choked mitch a few years ago he died of cancer i feel so sad i never got to see him i never got to forgive it pains me now so much he was crying again a soft and quiet cry and because his head was back the tears rolled off the side of his face before they reached his lips sorry i said don't be he whispered tears are okay i continued rubbing lotion into his lifeless toes he wept for a few minutes alone with his memories it's not just other people we need to forgive mitch he finally whispered we also need to forgive ourselves ourselves yes for all the things we didn't do all the things we should have done you can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened that doesn't help you when you get to where i am i always wished i had done more with my work i wished i had written more books i used to beat myself up over it now i see that never did any good make peace you need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you i leaned over and dabbed at the tears with a tissue mori flicked his eyes open and closed his breathing was audible like a light snore forgive yourself forgive others don't wait mitch not everyone gets the time i'm getting not everyone is as lucky i toss the tissue into the waste basket and return to his feet lucky i pressed my thumb into his hardened flesh and he didn't even feel it the tension of opposites mitch remember that things pulling in different directions i remember i mourned my dwindling time but i cherished the chance it gives me to make things right we sat there for a while quietly as the rain splattered against the windows the hibiscus plant behind his head was still holding on small but firm mitch mori whispered aha i rolled his toes between my fingers lost in the task look at me i glanced up and saw the most intense look in his eyes i don't know why you came back to me but i want to say this he paused and his voice choked if i could have had another son i would have liked it to be you i dropped my eyes kneading the dying flesh of his feet between my fingers for a moment i felt afraid as if accepting his words would somehow betray my own father but when i looked up i saw maury smiling through tears and i knew there was no betrayal in a moment like this all i was afraid of was saying goodbye i've picked a place to be buried where is that not far from here on a hill beneath a tree overlooking a pond very serene a good place to think are you planning on thinking there i'm planning on being dead there he chuckles i chuckle will you visit visit just come and talk make it a tuesday you always come on tuesdays we're tuesday people right tuesday people come to talk then he has grown so weak so fast look at me he says i'm looking you'll come to my grave to tell me your problems my problems yes and you'll give me answers i'll give you what i can don't i always i picture his grave on the hill overlooking the pond some little nine foot piece of earth where they will place him cover him with dirt put a stone on top maybe in a few weeks maybe in a few days i see myself sitting there alone arms across my knees staring into space it won't be the same i say not being able to hear you talk ah talk he closes his eyes and smiles tell you what after undead you talk and i'll listen the 13th tuesday we talk about the perfect day maury wanted to be cremated he had discussed it with charlotte and they decided it was the best way the rabbi from brandeis alex allred a longtime friend whom they chose to conduct the funeral service had come to visit mori and mori told them of his cremation plans and now yes make sure they don't overcook me the rabbi was stunned but mori was able to joke about his body now the closer he got to the end the more he saw it as a mere shell a container of the soul it was withering to useless skin and bones anyhow which made it easier to let go we are so afraid of the sight of death mori told me when i sat down i adjusted the microphone on his collar but it kept flopping over maury coughed he was coughing all the time now i read a book the other day it said as soon as someone dies in a hospital they pull the sheets up over their head and they will the body to some shoot and push it down they can't wait to get it out of their sight people act as if death is contagious i fumbled with the microphone maury glanced at my hands it's not contagious you know death is as natural as life it's part of the deal we made he coughed again and i moved back and waited always braced for something serious mori had been having bad nights lately frightening nights he could sleep only a few hours at a time before violent hacking spells woke him the nurses would come into the bedroom pound him on the back try to bring up the poison even if they got him breathing normally again dash normally meaning with the help of the oxygen machine the fight left him fatigued the whole next day the oxygen tube was up his nose now i hated the sight of it to me it symbolized helplessness i wanted to pull it out last night maury said softly yes last night i had a terrible spell it went on for hours and i really wasn't sure i was going to make it no breath no end to the choking at one point i started to get dizzy and then i felt a certain piece i felt that i was ready to go his eyes widened mitch it was a most incredible feeling the sensation of accepting what was happening being at peace i was thinking about a dream i had last week where i was crossing a bridge into something unknown being ready to move on to whatever is next but you didn't maury waited a moment he shook his head slightly no i didn't but i felt that i could do you understand that's what we're all looking for a certain peace with the idea of dying if we know in the end that we can ultimately have that peace with dying then we can finally do the really hard thing which is make peace with living he asked to see the hibiscus plant on the ledge behind him i cupped it in my hand and held it up near his eyes he smiled it's natural to die he said again the fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don't see ourselves as part of nature we think because we're human we're something above nature he smiled at the plant we're not everything that gets born dies he looked at me do you accept that all right he whispered now here's the payoff here is how we are different from these wonderful plants and animals as long as we can love each other and remember the feeling of love we had we can die without ever really going away all the love you created is still there all the memories are still there you live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here his voice was raspy which usually meant he needed to stop for a while i placed the plant back on the ledge and went to shut off the tape recorder this is the last sentence maury got out before i did death ends a life not a relationship there had been a development in the treatment of als an experimental drug that was just gaining passage it was not a cure but a delay a slowing of the decay for perhaps a few months mori had heard about it but he was too far gone besides the medicine wouldn't be available for several months not for me mori said dismissing it in all the time he was sick maury never held out hope he would be cured he was realistic to a fault one time i asked if someone were to wave a magic wand and make him all better would he become in time the man he had been before he shook his head no way i could go back i'm a different self now i'm different in my attitudes i'm different appreciating my body which i didn't do fully before i'm different in terms of trying to grapple with the big questions the ultimate questions the ones that won't go away that's the thing you see once you get your fingers on the important questions you can't turn away from them and which are the important questions as i see it they have to do with love responsibility spirituality awareness and if i were healthy today those would still be my issues they should have been all along i tried to imagine mori healthy i tried to imagine him pulling the covers from his body stepping from the chair the two of us going for a walk around the neighborhood the way we used to walk around campus i suddenly realized it had been 16 years since i'd seen him standing up 16 years what if you had one day perfectly healthy i asked what would you do 24 hours 24 hours let's see i get up in the morning do my exercises have a lovely breakfast of sweet rolls and tea go for a swim then have my friends come over for a nice lunch i let them come one or two at a time so we could talk about their families their issues talk about how much we mean to each other then i'd like to go for a walk in a garden with some trees watch their colors watch the birds take in the nature that i haven't seen in so long now in the evening we'd all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta maybe some duck i love duck and then we dance the rest of the night i'd dance with all the wonderful dance partners out there until i was exhausted and then i'd go home and have a deep wonderful sleep that's it that's it it was so simple so average i was actually a little disappointed i figured he'd fly to italy or have lunch with the president or romp on the seashore or try every exotic thing he could think of after all these months lying there unable to move a leg or a foot how could he find perfection in such an average day then i realized this was the whole point before i left that day mori asked if he could bring up a topic your brother he said i felt a shiver i do not know how maury knew this was on my mind i had been trying to call my brother in spain for weeks and had learned from a friend of his that he was flying back and forth to a hospital in amsterdam mitch i know it hurts when you can't be with someone you love but you need to be at peace with his desires maybe he doesn't want you interrupting your life maybe he can't deal with that burden i tell everyone i know to carry on with the life they know don't ruin it because i am dying but he's my brother i said i know mori said that's why it hurts i saw peter in my mind when he was eight years old his curly blonde hair puffed into a sweaty ball atop his head i saw us wrestling in the yard next to our house the grass stains soaking through the knees of our jeans i saw him singing songs in front of the mirror holding a brush as a microphone and i saw squeezing into the attic where we hid together as children testing our parents will define us for dinner and then i saw him as the adult who had drifted away thin and frail his face bony from the chemotherapy treatments maury i said why doesn't he want to see me my old professor sighed there is no formula to relationships they have to be negotiated in loving ways with room for both parties what they want and what they need what they can do and what their life is like in business people negotiate to win they negotiate to get what they want maybe you're too used to that love is different love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own you've had these special times with your brother and you no longer have what you had with him you want them back you never want them to stop but that's part of being human stop renew stop renew i looked at him i saw all the death in the world i felt helpless you'll find a way back to your brother maury said how do you know maury smiled you found me didn't you i heard a nice little story the other day maury says he closes his eyes for a moment and i wait okay the story is about a little wave bobbing along in the ocean having a grand old time he's enjoying the wind and the fresh air until he notices the other waves in front of him crashing against the shore my god this is terrible the wave says look what's going to happen to me then along comes another wave it sees the first wave looking grim and it says to him why do you look so sad the first wave says you don't understand we're all going to crash all of us waves are going to be nothing isn't it terrible the second wave says no you don't understand you're not a wave you're part of the ocean i smile maury closes his eyes again part of the ocean he says part of the ocean ocean i watch him breathe in and out in and out the 14th tuesday we say goodbye it was cold and damp as i walked up the steps to maury's house i took in little details things i hadn't noticed for all the times i visited the cut of the hill the stone facade of the house the pakistan were plants the low shrubs i walked slowly taking my time stepping on dead with leaves that flattened beneath my feet charlotte had called the day before to tell me maury was not doing well this was her way of saying the final days had arrived mori had canceled all of his appointments and had been sleeping much of the time which was unlike him he never cared for sleeping not when there were people he could talk with he wants you to come visit charlotte said but mitch yes he's very weak the poor steps the glass in the front door i absorbed these things in a slow observant manner as if seeing them for the first time i felt the tape recorder in the bag on my shoulder and i unzipped it to make sure i had tapes i don't know why i always had tapes connie answered the bell normally buoyant she had a drawn look on her face her hello was softly spoken how's he doing i said not so good she bit her lower lip i don't like to think about it he's such a sweet man you know i knew this is such a shame charlotte came down the hall and hugged me she said that maury was still sleeping even though it was 10 a.m we went into the kitchen i helped her straighten up noticing all the bottles of pills lined up on the table a small army of brown plastic soldiers with white caps my old professor was taking morphine now to ease his breathing i put the food i had brought with me into the refrigerator soup vegetable cakes tuna salad i apologize to charlotte for bringing it maury hadn't chewed food like this in months we both knew that but it had become a small tradition sometimes when you're losing someone you hang on to whatever tradition you can i waited in the living room where maury and ted koppel had done their first interview i read the newspaper that was lying on the table two minnesota children had shot each other playing with their father's guns a baby had been found buried in a garbage can in an alley in los angeles i put down the paper and stared into the empty fireplace i tapped my shoe lightly on the hardwood floor eventually i heard a door open and closed then charlotte's footsteps coming toward me all right she said softly he's ready for you i rose and i turned toward our familiar spot then saw a strange woman sitting at the end of the hall in a folding chair her eyes on a book her legs crossed this was a hospice nurse part of the 24 hour watch maury's study was empty i was confused then i turned back hesitantly to the bedroom and there he was lying in bed under the sheet i had seen him like this only one other time when he was getting massaged in the echo of his aphorism when you're in bed you're dead began a new inside my head i entered pushing a smile onto my face he wore a yellow pajama like top and a blanket covered him from the chest down the lump of his form was so withered that i almost thought there was something missing he was as small as a child maury's mouth was open and his skin was pale and tight against his cheekbones when his eyes rolled toward me he tried to speak but i heard only a soft grunt there he is i said mustering all the excitement i could find in my empty till he exhaled shut his eyes then smiled the very effort seeming to tire him my dear friend he finally said i am your friend i said i'm not so good today tomorrow will be better he pushed out another breath and forced a nod he was struggling with something beneath the sheets and i realized he was trying to move his hands toward the opening hold he said i pulled the covers down and grasped his fingers they disappeared inside my own i leaned in close a few inches from his face it was the first time i had seen him unshaven the small white whiskers looking so out of place as if someone had shaken salt neatly across his cheeks and chin how could there be new life in his beard when it was draining everywhere else mori i said softly coach he corrected coach i said i felt a shiver he spoke in short bursts inhaling air exhaling words his voice was thin and raspy he smelled the void you are a good soul a good soul touch me he whispered he moved my hands to his heart here it felt as if i had a pit in my throat throat coach ah i don't know how to say goodbye he patted my hand weakly keeping it on his chest this is how we say goodbye he breathed softly in and out i could feel his ribcage rise and fall then he looked right at me love you he rast i love you too coach no you do no something else what else do you know you always have his eyes got small and then he cried his face contorting like a baby who hasn't figured how his tear ducts work i held him close for several minutes i rubbed his loose skin i stroked his hair i put a palm against his face and felt the bones close to the flesh and the tiny wood tears as if squeezed from a dropper when his breathing approached normal again i cleared my throat and said i knew he was tired so i would be back next tuesday and i expected him to be a little more alert thank you he snorted lightly as close as he could come to a laugh it was a sad sound just the same i picked up the unopened bag with the tape recorder why had i even brought this i knew we would never use it i leaned in and kissed him closely my face against his whiskers on whiskers skin on skin holding it there longer than normal in case it gave him even a split second of pleasure okay then i said pulling away i blinked back to tears and he smacked his lips together and raised his eyebrows at the side of my face i like to think it was a fleeting moment of satisfaction for my dear old professor he had finally made me cry okay then he whispered graduation mori died on a saturday morning his immediate family was with him in the house rob made it in from tokyo he got to kiss his father goodbye and john was there and of course charlotte was there in charlotte's cousin marsha who had written the poem that still moved maury and his unofficial memorial service the poem that likened him to a tender sequoia they slept in shifts around his bed maury had fallen into a coma two days after our final visit and the doctor said he could go at any moment instead he hung on through a tough afternoon through a dark night finally on the 4th of november when those he loved had left the room just for a moment to grab coffee in the kitchen the first time none of them were with him since the coma began more he stopped breathing and he was gone i believe he died this way on purpose i believe he wanted no chilling moments no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it the way he had been haunted by his mother's death noticed telegram or by his father's corpse in the city moored i believe he knew that he was in his own bed that his books and his notes and his small hibiscus plant were nearby he wanted to go serenely and that is how he went the funeral was held on a damp windy morning the grass was wet in the sky was the color of milk we stood by the hole in the earth close enough to hear the pond water lapping against the edge and to see ducks shaking off their feathers although hundreds of people had wanted to attend charlotte kept this gathering small just a few close friends and relatives rabbi axelrod read a few poems maury's brother david who still walked with a limp from his childhood polio lifted the shovel and tossed dirt in the grave as per tradition at one point when maury's ashes were placed into the ground i glanced around the cemetery maury was right it was indeed a lovely spot trees and grass and a sloping hill you talked i'll listen he had said i tried doing that in my head into my happiness found that the imagined conversation felt almost natural i looked down at my hands saw my watch and realized why it was tuesday my father moved through phase of wee singing each new leaf out of each tree and every child was sure that spring danced when she heard my father sing poem by e cummings read by moria's son rob at the memorial service conclusion i look back sometimes at the person i was before i rediscovered my old professor i want to talk to that person i want to tell him what to look out for what mistakes to avoid i want to tell him to be more open to ignore the lure of advertised values to pay attention when your loved ones are speaking as if it were the last time you might hear them mostly i want to tell the person to get on an airplane and visit a gentle old man in west newton massachusetts sooner rather than later before that old man gets sick and loses his ability to dance i know i cannot do this none of us can undo what we've done or relive a life already recorded but if professor morris schwartz taught me anything at all it was this there is no such thing as too late in life he was changing until the day he said goodbye not long after maury's death i reached my brother in spain we had a long talk i told him i respected his distance and that all i wanted was to be in touch in the present not just the past to hold him in my life as much as he could let me you're my only brother i said i don't want to lose you i love you i had never said such a thing to him before a few days later i received a message on my fax machine it was typed into sprawling poorly punctuated all cap letters fashion that always characterize my brother's words hi i joined the 90s it began he wrote a few little stories what he'd been doing that week a couple of jokes at the end he signed off his way i have heartburn and diarrhea at the moment lies a chat later signed sortish i laughed until there were tears in my eyes this book was largely maury's idea he called it our final thesis like the best of work projects it brought us closer together and mori was delighted when several publishers expressed interest even though he died before meeting any of them the advanced money helped pay more's enormous medical bills and for that we were both grateful the title by the way we came up with one day in maury's office he liked naming things he had several ideas but when i said how about tuesdays with mori he smiled in an almost blushing way and i knew that was it after mori died i went through boxes of old college material and i discovered a final paper i had written for one of his classes it was 20 years old now on the front page where my penciled comments scribbled to maury and beneath them were his comments scribbled back mine began dear coach his began dear player for some reason each time i read that i miss him more have you ever really had a teacher one who saw you as a raw but precious thing a jewel that with wisdom could be polished to a proud shine if you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers you will always find your way back sometimes it is only in your head sometimes it is right alongside their beds the last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his home by a window in his study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink flowers the class met on tuesdays no books were required the subject was the meaning of life it was taught from experience the teaching goes on [Music] [Music] you