Free Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom Page A

from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions-if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them-you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

    "But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, `All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.' "

    Morrie stopped and looked me over, perhaps to make sure I was getting this right.

    "I know you think this is just about dying," he said, "but it's like I keep telling you. When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

    Morrie talked about his most fearful moments, when he felt his chest locked in heaving surges or when he wasn't sure where his next breath would come from. These were horrifying times, he said, and his first emotions were horror, fear, anxiety. But once he recognized the feel of those emotions, their texture, their moisture, the shiver down the back, the quick flash of heat that crosses your brain-then he was able to say, "Okay. This is fear. Step away from it. Step away."

    I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. 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 the fear inside, if you 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, that 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."

    "Detach," Morrie said again.

    He closed his eyes, then coughed. Then he coughed again.

    Then he coughed again, more loudly.

    Suddenly, he was half-choking, the congestion in his lungs seemingly teasing him, jumping halfway up, then dropping back down, stealing his breath. He was gagging, then hacking violently, and he shook his hands in front of him-with his eyes closed, shaking his hands, he appeared almost possessed-and I felt my forehead break into a sweat. I instinctively pulled him forward and slapped the back of his shoulders, and he pushed a tissue to his mouth and spit out a wad of phlegm.

    The coughing stopped, and Morrie dropped back into the foam pillows and sucked in air.

    "You okay? You all right?" I said, trying to hide my fear.

    "I'm . . . okay," Morrie whispered, raising a shaky finger. "Just . . . wait a minute."

    We sat there quietly until his breathing returned to normal. I felt the perspiration on my scalp. He asked me to close the window, the breeze was making him cold. I didn't mention that it was eighty degrees outside.

    Finally, in a whisper, he said, "I know how I want to die."

    I waited in silence.

    "I want to die serenely. Peacefully. Not like what just happened.

    "And this is where detachment comes in. If I die in the middle of a coughing spell like I just had, I need to be able to detach from the horror, I need to say, `This is my moment.'

    "I don't want to leave the world in a state of fright. I want to know what's happening, accept it, get to a peaceful place, and let go. Do you understand?"

    I nodded.

    Don't let go yet, I added quickly.

    Morrie