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Every Tuesday a sports writer gets on a plane in Detroit, flies to Boston, and carries a bag of food into a house in West Newton. The man he is visiting can barely eat any of it. Mitch brings it anyway. Week after week the bags go into the fridge, and the fridge fills up with food nobody will touch.
That is the quiet joke running under Tuesdays with Morrie, and it tells you a lot about the man carrying the bags. He does not know how to show up for a dying person. So he shows up with lunch. He is doing the only thing he knows how to do, which is to bring something, and the book is the story of him slowly learning to bring himself instead.
If you finished it and are still turning it over, or if you searched the Tuesdays with Morrie meaning because the book did something to you that the summaries did not explain, this is a closer look. Because the thing the book is famous for, an old man’s wisdom about death, is not really what the book is about.
Tuesdays with Morrie Meaning: It Is a Book About the Student
Tuesdays with Morrie is a 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom about his old sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, who taught at Brandeis University near Boston. Morrie was diagnosed with ALS in 1994. Mitch had graduated in 1979, promised to keep in touch, and then did not, for sixteen years. He only found his way back after seeing Morrie interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline. A newspaper strike in Detroit freed up his weeks, and the two of them met on fourteen Tuesdays until Morrie died in November 1995.
The book opens with a chapter called “The Curriculum.” It describes the visits as the last class of Morrie’s life. The class met on Tuesdays in his study, by a window with a hibiscus plant on the ledge. There were no grades and no books. A funeral was held instead of a graduation. And instead of a final exam, the one student was expected to turn in a paper. The paper is the book you are holding.
Read that framing slowly, because it changes who the book is about. A class has a teacher and a student, and the teacher is dying from page one. We know how Morrie’s story ends before it starts. The only open question in the whole book is what happens to the student. Mitch is the one with a future, and Mitch is the one whose life is quietly broken.
The book is honest about how broken. He is a workaholic who covers games for a living and never sits still. His phone is always ringing. He has not called his old professor in sixteen years, and that is not even the worst silence in his life. His younger brother Peter is in Spain, fighting pancreatic cancer, and refusing any help from the family. Mitch cannot get through to him. The man who flies across the country every week to sit with a dying teacher cannot get his own brother on the phone.
The Course Has One Assignment
Here is the thing most readers never notice, because the chapter titles hide it in plain sight. Each Tuesday has a topic. The world, self-pity, regrets, death, family, emotions, the fear of aging, money, how love goes on, marriage, culture, forgiveness, the perfect day, and then goodbye. It looks like a syllabus. It reads like one. Critics who dislike the book usually say this is the problem: fourteen topics, fourteen helpings of greeting-card wisdom.
But look at what actually moves in the story. Almost nothing. Morrie gets weaker. Mitch brings food. They talk. The one thread that changes from the first Tuesday to the last is Peter. He comes up on the fifth Tuesday, when the topic is family. He comes up again on the thirteenth, when Morrie, with almost no strength left, pushes Mitch to try his brother one more time. And the book’s final pages are not about Morrie at all. They are about a phone call to Spain.
That is the whole plot. Fourteen weeks of a dying man teaching, and the course has exactly one assignment: call your brother. Mitch turns it in late, after the teacher is gone. The book is not a collection of sayings. It is a story about a man who could not make one phone call, and what it took to make him pick up the phone.
There is a sad symmetry underneath this that the book does not spell out. Years earlier, Mitch’s uncle died of pancreatic cancer. That death is what scared the young Mitch out of being a piano player and into being a busy, successful, always-working journalist. He watched a man die and decided the answer was to move faster. Now the same cancer has his brother, and the same busyness is the thing standing between them. One death made Mitch run. It takes another death, Morrie’s, to make him stop.
Morrie Hands Mitch His Own Story
If you want proof that Morrie knew what the real assignment was, look at the twelfth Tuesday, the one about forgiveness. Morrie tells Mitch about an old friend named Norman. Years ago, when Morrie’s wife Charlotte had a serious operation, Norman never called. Morrie was hurt, and when Norman tried to make it right, Morrie would not let him. Then Norman died of cancer, and the apology Morrie refused could never be accepted.
Morrie is not telling a story about forgiveness in general. He is telling Mitch’s story back to him with the names changed. A friend who went silent. A sickness. A man too proud to pick up the phone. A death that makes it permanent. Morrie cries telling it. One Tuesday later he brings up Peter directly. That is not a coincidence. That is a teacher who has read his student’s paper before it was written.
This is also the answer to the “greeting-card” complaint. The sayings in the book are simple, and Morrie would be the first to admit it. “Love each other or perish,” his favourite line, is borrowed from the poet W. H. Auden. Nothing he says is new. What makes the book work is not the sayings. It is that every saying is aimed at one specific man in one specific chair, and the reader can see exactly where it lands.
Take the thirteenth Tuesday, when Mitch asks what Morrie would do with one perfectly healthy day. Mitch is waiting for something big. Morrie describes a morning swim, a nice lunch with friends, a walk in a garden, dinner, dancing, and sleep. That is it. Mitch is almost disappointed, and then he understands. The perfect day is an ordinary day. The point is not that Morrie has low standards. The point is that Mitch has been chasing something for sixteen years that Morrie, with weeks left, would trade for a sandwich with friends.
A Man Numbering His Days
On the fourth Tuesday, the one about death, Mitch asks the obvious question. How does anyone actually get ready to die? Morrie borrows an idea from the Buddhists. Imagine a little bird on your shoulder, and every day it asks: is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing what I need to do? Morrie’s claim is that once you learn how to die, you learn how to live, and he says it twice so Mitch will hear it.
Now look at the table of contents again. The First Tuesday. The Second Tuesday. The Third. All the way to the Fourteenth. The book is literally a man counting his days. Morrie is doing with a calendar what the bird does with a question. He knows the number is small, so every Tuesday has to count, and because every Tuesday has to count, each one gets a subject and gets taken seriously.
That is a very old idea, and it is older than the Buddhists. One of the oldest prayers in the Bible, a psalm the text credits to Moses, asks for exactly this: teach us to number our days, so that we may get a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). Not a long life. A counted one. The psalm’s bet is the same as Morrie’s: that a person who knows the days are numbered will spend them differently than a person who assumes there are plenty more.
There is one difference, and it is worth being honest about. Morrie borrowed from everywhere. He was born Jewish, took the bird from the Buddhists, and on the eleventh Tuesday he tells Mitch to build his own culture rather than accept the one he was handed. His bird is something you put on your own shoulder. The psalm is a request. It asks to be taught to count, by God, as if counting your own days were not something a person can do alone. Mitch, for what it is worth, could not do it alone. He needed a man by a window to do it for him, out loud, every Tuesday, until it took.
The Fax
On the last Tuesday Morrie can barely speak. Mitch holds him for a long time, and when he pulls away he is crying, which he has not done in the whole book. Morrie had been trying to get him to cry for months. He finally manages it the week he dies. The teacher’s last success is his student’s tears.
Morrie dies that Saturday. The funeral, fittingly, falls on a Tuesday. And then, a short while later, Mitch reaches Peter in Spain. They talk for a long time. Mitch tells him he just wants to be in touch, and that he loves him. A few days later a fax comes through from his brother. It is not a tearful letter. It is a few stories about his week, a complaint about his stomach, and a joke for a sign-off. Mitch laughs until he cries.
That is the ending, and it is the right one. The assignment gets turned in. The reward is not wisdom. It is a dumb joke from a brother who is still alive. If the book has stayed with you, you might also like our reading of Man’s Search for Meaning, another short book people quote more than they read, or Stoner, a novel about a professor whose whole life passed as quietly as Morrie’s perfect day. And if you have never actually counted, there is a small calculator that tells you how many days you have been alive. The number is always smaller than it feels.
Your Turn
Is Tuesdays with Morrie really Morrie’s book, or is it Mitch’s? Does the book earn its sentiment, or do the critics who call it greeting-card wisdom have a point? Tell us how it landed for you in the comments.
Questions About Tuesdays with Morrie
What is Tuesdays with Morrie actually about?
Tuesdays with Morrie, the 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom, records fourteen Tuesday visits between Albom and his dying former professor, Morrie Schwartz. On the surface it is Morrie’s wisdom about death, family, money and love. Underneath, it is the story of Mitch, a workaholic who has lost touch with everyone who matters, including his sick brother Peter, and what it takes to make him reconnect.
Is Tuesdays with Morrie a true story?
Yes. Tuesdays with Morrie is a memoir. Morrie Schwartz was a real sociology professor at Brandeis University who was diagnosed with ALS in 1994 and died on 4 November 1995. Mitch Albom, a Detroit sports columnist and his former student, reconnected with him after seeing Morrie interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline and visited him every Tuesday until his death.
What does “love each other or perish” mean in Tuesdays with Morrie?
“Love each other or perish” is Morrie Schwartz’s favourite line in Tuesdays with Morrie, and it is his paraphrase of the poet W. H. Auden. Morrie uses it to mean that without love and real human connection a person is not fully alive. In the book it points directly at Mitch, who is successful but cut off from the people who love him.
How does Tuesdays with Morrie end?
Tuesdays with Morrie ends with Morrie dying on a Saturday after the fourteenth visit, and his funeral falling on a Tuesday. Shortly after, Mitch finally reaches his estranged brother Peter in Spain, tells him he loves him, and a few days later receives a joking fax from Peter in return. The last line of the book says the teacher’s work goes on.
Why did Mitch Albom write Tuesdays with Morrie?
Mitch Albom has said that Tuesdays with Morrie was written in part to pay Morrie Schwartz’s medical bills, because Morrie wanted to die at home and the care was expensive. The book was turned down by several publishers before Doubleday took it shortly before Morrie’s death. It went on to sell more than 17 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages.
Share This
- Tuesdays with Morrie has fourteen chapters of a dying man’s wisdom and exactly one plot: will Mitch call his brother. Never noticed that until this reread.
- Morrie’s chapter titles are The First Tuesday, The Second Tuesday, all the way to fourteen. The whole book is a man counting his days. That is the real structure.
- The ending of Tuesdays with Morrie is not a wise saying. It is a fax from a brother with a stomach ache. Mitch laughs until he cries, and so did I.
