Impending Death - Tuesdays with Morrie - Book Report/Review Example

Impending Death - Tuesdays with Morrie Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (1997) was a very interesting look at impending death. Morrie was a man who could have died horribly or in the positive way that he did. Morrie wanted people to know what it was like for him and he related this information in his discussions with Mitch. It was interesting that Morrie was not diagnosed with ALS until he was in his seventies (p. 6). I found this interesting because he seemed to have everything he wanted and then this happened. Most people are accustomed to winding down by the time they are in their later years, but to have a debilitating disease seemed unfair. For Morrie, this diagnosis could have sent him to an early grave but he chose to make it another lesson. Morrie wanted people to live their lives fully and with love. As he told Mitch, "the most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and let it come in" (p. 45-46). Morrie understood that life could be lived no matter what the circumstances. This sentiment made me like Morrie from the beginning. Mitch brought Morrie to the reader as strongly as if they were the third party present in the Tuesday meetings. Morrie was a very wise man. Telling Mitch that he needed to be "fully human" and that there was a "need for connectedness with the society around [him]" (p. 40) was one of the many important statements that Mitch took with him throughout the rest of his life. I agree with this statement because I see people all the time who are not connected to each other. As an example, many people spend more time connecting on the computer with social networking than they do talking on the phone or keeping in touch with loved ones. Mitch's statement about Morrie's deterioration was painful, yet it seemed to allow him to gain understanding of what was happening to Morrie on the deepest level. I thought about how I would feel if I was back in touch with one of my teachers who I adored, and was faced with their impending death. I could not imagine the impact of Mitch's statement, "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 lump husk, perhaps able to blink or cluck a tongue, like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh" (p. 8). I thought that Mitch was very brave to sit with Morrie when he could have just walked away. Morrie was very brave too because as his physical body began to deteriorate and he was losing control of his body, he still kept his head up and took the time to spread his idea of love as he kept adjusting to the changes in his body. The contrast between the "classroom Morrie" (in italics) and the Morrie that Mitch was seeing in the present gave the reader a total understanding of Morrie. The experience of this wonderfully vibrant man with all his faculties and his wholeness to be standing next to the frail, dying man was heartbreaking. Mitch's statement that meetings with Morrie, "felt like a cleansing rinse of human kindness" (p. 48) to him allowed the reader to understand that these meetings were more than visits for Mitch -- they were a time to reconnect with the real meaning of life. Death is never easy for people. As a society, most people do not want to talk about death and they do not like it when they are confronted with a disease they cannot control. I felt that Albom did a very good job of showing the debilitation of the disease and his own difficulties in seeing his beloved teacher deteriorate; He used his writing style to show the emotion instead. There were many ironies for Albom. As an example, the conscious knowledge of what was happening to Morrie and the observation he made about the people who, in late August were so concerned with the heat, that "every face [he] saw looked ready to kill somebody" (p. 58). The irony of this was that people were so consumed by the heat that they forgot what was really important in their lives. This made me think about how in our society, we want to believe that we are never going to die on the one hand, and on the other we do not want to talk about death because it can be so close. It is easier to get caught up in the minutia of living on a daily basis instead of practicing the factors that can help us live a longer life. Morrie reminded us that love should be the most important element to everyone. When Morrie talked about his loss of control over his faculties. His hands were the most impacting loss for him because "I gesture with my hands. This is how I give to people" (p. 61). He even saw a good in this -- when Koppel asked him how he would give without the use of his hands, he said "Maybe I'll have everyone ask me yes or no questions" (p. 61). I was surprised at Morrie's resilience, especially since his early years were so difficult. The effects of his mother's death, the poverty, and various other circumstances were circumvented by Eva, who taught him "to love and to care" (p. 66). It was interesting that Morrie died on a Saturday and was buried on Tuesday, which gave an interesting twist to the statement: " Sometimes when you're losing someone, you hang onto whatever tradition you can" (p. 162). Since Morrie and Mitch were "Tuesday people", it made sense that they would be "together" on that last Tuesday. This is a very special book about life and death and how to come to terms about both. Dr. Kubler-Ross Turning from Albom's book to the others made me wonder why there is so much written about death. I was struck first by how differently each book saw the topic of death and the audience that they were perhaps wanting to reach. Starting with Dr. Kubler-Ross' book (2005) the whole idea of death and grieving was different than what Morrie experienced; however, the spirit within Morrie and Kubler-Ross was similar. There was no coincidence that Kubler-Ross wrote so much about death and dying since she wanted to understand it intimately. There was also no coincidence that she was able to choose the timing of her death to be when the book was finished. I found this book to be more "clinical" than Albom's but this was probably because she was a doctor and because of her detachment. I did like the fact that the book talked about aspects of grief that other books do not. As an example, I would think that a most people have experienced people who look like their beloved deceased person, have heard their voice or felt their touch at some point after death. The importance of "hauntings" as it was called in the book, was important to talk about to let people know that this was a natural occurrence of grief. The explanation: "We simply need to acknowledge that the feelings are real, and if the presence feels unsettling, there is some unfinished business … " (p. 56). Was a help for people understand that they are not mentally ill when they are feeling these things. I think that using actual client examples was important to give the reader the opportunity to see that everyone experiences grief differently. This also took some of the stiltedness out. I think that Kubler-Ross' ability to write about her own grief added to the book. People do not always understand or acknowledge that the individual who is dying must also have space for their own grief. She states, "I also learned early not to grieve for myself, not to cry and not to feel' (p. 211). She states later that "perhaps the repression of my grief was instrumental in my reaching out to others to find their own" (p. 212). I agree. Boss (1999) took a very different approach in dealing with what she calls, "ambiguous loss." She states that we feel when people leave our lives without providing closure. This is also a very important aspect of the grieving process. I do not know whether anyone else has written on this topic but I find ambiguous loss to be some of the most devastating. As she states, "ambiguous loss is always stressful and often tormenting … of all the losses experienced in personal relationships, ambiguous loss is the most devastating because it remains unclear, indeterminate" (p. 5-6). I thought that the losses she talked about were important but the book did not go far enough. As an example, in the section entitled, "Leaving without Goodbye," I would have liked to see her address the loss that happens when someone walks out of your life without an explanation. Beck's book (1973) was the most difficult to read in a sense because it was developed from a more esoteric and psychological point of view. He states, "the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death …" (p. ix). In other words, the fear of death is a universal concept that everyone must deal with over time. Although I understand that everyone has a fear of death, I do not think that he explained his point of view very well. In fact, I found the book difficult to understand, and boring. Several times I found myself struggling with what Becker was trying to say and why he thought it was important. I am all for philosophical discussions, but this one was beyond my interest. References Albom, M. (1997). Tuesdays with Morrie: An old man, a young man and life’s greatest lesson. NY: Doubleday. Becker, E. (1974). The denial of death. NY: Simon & Schuster. Boss, P. (1999). Ambiguous loss: Learning to live with unresolved grief. MA: Harvard University Press. Kubler-Ross, E. & Kessler, D. (2005). On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. NY: Scribner. Read More