"Apply the principles of Tuesdays with Morrie to your life" (Allen James, 2012).
Tuesdays with Morrie, in my eyes, is an outstanding book about youth and wisdom, life and death, having and giving, holding on and letting go (www.bonnernetwork.pbworks.com). The initial response I usually get from students when I present them with the question, "What is the main theme of Tuesdays with Morrie?", is "Death". They then embark on a lengthy philosophical discussion about death and dying. Not inappropriate for college freshmen and sophomores who expect the instructor is hoping to get their take on the topic of death and dying.
However; I maintain the main theme to be found in Tuesdays with Morrie is just the opposite, LIFE and LIVING!
Anyone who reads Tuesdays with Morrie is going to immediately identify a multitude of insights throughout the book. Morrie’s story and the wonderful friendship the two men in the book developed is endearing. Morrie speaks clearly, even as his body withers. He gives voice to the viewpoint of a person who grapples with a confining, terminal condition.
However; I have also found myself feeling guilty about how I have handled LIFE and LIVING/DEATH and DYING throughout my adult life after observing the way it is approached in this book. When I was around 12 years old, I was helping my mother clean out the "root cellar", or in this case an old larger closet in the back of the house where she kept the jars of tomatoes, beets, green beans, and jellies canned during the summer for us to enjoy during the winter. As we sat there in the floor of the "root cellar", I looked over at my mother, with whom I had a relationship of admiration, mutual respect, and true compassion, and said to her, "Mom, when I grow up don't worry about anything. I'll be here to take care of you at the end of your life", or words to that effect anyway. She just looked at me and smiled, straightening the flock of brown hair which always fell heavy upon my forehead due to my left part and the style which my military father always found suitable to me. I truly always thought I would be there to take care of my parents, if and when the time came.
Yet at the end of her life, as she lay at 62 years of age in a hospital bed weakened by and dying of lung cancer, I was starkly reminded of my LIFE and LIVING choices and how they directly affect our DEATH and DYING reality. Now, 18 years later, here was Mom, unable to care for herself in the most basic sense of the word. And because of my blindness, I had not able to help her as much as I wanted. People told me many times my loving her was sufficient, it must have helped in some way.
I visited my mother during my spring break from teaching that March, which also fell during my birthday. I spent the entire time at her bedside taking care of her daily needs, allowing my guilt to be turned into some other emotion, anything but guilt. One afternoon when it was just she and I in the room, I was overcome with the feeling of finality; it finally hit me my mother would be leaving this dimension long before I or anyone else could have expected. Out of my selfishness my mother opened her unconditional loving arms out to me, as if she was reading my mind. I crawled up in the hospital bed next to her, sobbing as she held me tight, giving ME support and giving ME understanding when it should have been I supporting and giving to her. But it was due to this moment I felt totally at peace with this finality. I was given the chance to do what most do not get to do; share with my mother what her LIFE and LIVING had meant to me and how much her LIFE and LIVING had determined who I was then and who I would become in the future. I got to say my "goodbye" to my mother, thus quelling the expectation I had had for years of how I would NOT be able to handle my mother's death when it finally arrived. Still her reminder came; HER sharing with me just how much my LIFE and LIVING was etched into her own person, as she said, "You always said you were going to be here to take care of me when I got to the end of my life".
Many tell me it was inadequate to just say I love you and hug her, but Morrie made me think differently. He cherished all the love he received from the constant stream of family and friends who visited him throughout his ordeal.
Maybe, just maybe, I did all I could. Beyond this, Morrie voices many wonderful ideas about living and Mitch’s responses are great as well. The main message Morrie gives Mitch about LIFE is open up to love, give to your community, and find purpose in life.
Apply the principles of Tuesdays with Morrie to your life, and keep looking up. :) AJ
I just HAVE to comment on this one, it has lodged in my mind & I've mulled it over and over again. It is nearing the one year anniversary of when my mom had her lung surgery to remove cancer. I was super-woman and even had the presence of mind to have the important conversation with her about an advanced directive. Somehow, as long as I was wearing my patient-educator/patient hat, I was just fine to talk about it all w/o any severe emotional feelings. I knew that she was going to be OK, whether that meant coming out stronger on the other side or taking her heavenly journey. I've always prayed that the Lord would grant my mom longevity of years and quality of life until she reaches 120 years old, but the circumstances of that week really made me remember that God doesn't always give us what we want, just what we need.
ReplyDeleteWhile others may have written about their relationship with their moms, and how they may have been affected as a result of passing from this life, I have only seen your writing...here...this one.
I can't explain this very well, but knowing that God may not grant my prayer of giving my mom her 120th birthday, I've seen through your story here that there is a time, an opportunity, that God may grant me to say all that I need to say and her and I both have the awareness that all is complete. That is becoming my new prayer, that such a moment will be.