Thanks Morrie

"Morrie 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."

These past couple of posts have been quotes have been quotes from Tuesdays with Morrie. Morrie. I never met Morrie. But I know him. Every time I have read this book I tear up when Morrie's ALS finally got the best of him. His courage, his ability to look at the glass half full, his willingness to accept the cards life dealt. But I have never read through the eyes of someone who has lost someone close to them. When I lost Morrie this time, I wept. I cried in the arms of my wife, I cried like I haven't in a long time.

At the end it Mitch mentions talking to his younger self and what he would tell him to do differently, that's the part that really got me. I couldn't take it. I set the book down, I wasn't able to finish it later in the day. We all live our lives with that guilt, the what ifs, and what might have beens. There isn't a day that doesn't go by that I don't something I might have done differently.

Mitch says something, "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 lat" in life. He was changing until the day he said good-bye."

I want to quit beating myself up over the past and look to the brightness of the future. For every time I cry when I miss Amber I hope I can laugh aloud at the crazy good times we had together. This is to they moments she gave us, I know I will never forget them.

"he had finally made me cry."

Thanks Morrie for reminding me its ok to cry. . .

Experience them as well

"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.

Morrie'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 fear inside, if you will 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, the 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."

The pain still goes on?

"Before the show ended, Morrie 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," Morrie told Koppel, perching 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 at an early age . . .'"

Suddenly, the cameras still humming, Morrie adjusted the glasses. He stopped, bit 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 wouls have joined your group because . . .'"

His voice cracked.

"'. . . because I was lonely. . .'"

"Morrie," Koppel said, "that was seventy years ago when your mother died. The pain still goes on?"

"You bet," Morrie whispered."

Some mornings. . .

"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 t love...'"

Now What?

"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 Morrie pulled weakly on the car door, he felt as if he were dropping into a hole.

Now what? he thought."