Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a young Man and Life\'s Greatest Lesson pdfdrive com

The Audiovisual, Part Two
The “Nightline” show had done a follow-up story on Morrie partly becau°e
the reception for the first show had been so strong. This time, when the
cameramen 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 Morrie exchanged
stories about their childhood backgrounds: Koppel spoke of growing up in
England, and Morrie spoke of growing up in the Bronx. Morrie wore a
longsleeved blue shirt—he was almost always chilly, even when it was ninety
degrees outside—but Koppel removed his jacket and did the interview in shirt
and tie. It was as if Morrie were breaking him down, one layer at a time.
“You look fine,” Koppel said when the tape began to roll.
“That’s what everybody tells me,” Morrie said. “You sound fine.”
“That’s what everybody tells me.”
“So how do you know things are going downhill?”
Morrie 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,” Morrie 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?” Koppel asked.
Morrie shrugged. “Maybe I’ll have everyone ask me yes or no questions.”
It was such a simple answer that Koppel had to smile. He asked Morrie
about silence. He mentioned a dear friend Morrie had, Maurie Stein, who had
first sent Morrie’s aphorisms to the Boston Globe. They had been together at
Brandeis since the early sixties. Now Stein was going deaf. Koppel 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,” Morrie said. “And there’ll be a lot of love passing
between us. Ted, we’ve had thirty-five years of friendship. You don’t need
speech or hearing to feel that.”
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