My old professor's death sentence came in the summer of 1994. Doctors guessed he had two years left. Morrie knew it was less. But my old professor had made a great decision, one he began to construct the day when he came out of the doctor's office with a knife hanging over his head. "Do I give up, or do I make the best of my time left? "He had asked himself. He would not be ashamed of dying. Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of days.
The last class of my old professor's life had only one student. I was the student. The last class took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience. No grades were given, but there were oral exams each week. You were expected to respond to questions, and you were expected to ask questions of your own. You were also required to perform physical tasks now and then, such as lifting the professor's head to a comfortable spot on the pillow or placing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Kissing him good-bye earned you extra credit. No books were required, yet many topics were covered, including love, work, community, family, aging, forgiveness, and, finally, death.
I look back sometimes at the person I was before I rediscovered my old professor. I want to talk to that person. I want to tell him what to look out for, what mistakes to avoid. I want to tell him to be more open, to ignore the tricks of advertised values, to pay attention when your loved ones are speaking, as if it were the last time you might hear them. Mostly I want to tell that person to get on an airplane and visit a gentle old man in West Newton, Massachusetts sooner rather than later, before that old man gets sick and loses his ability to dance. 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 late" in life. He was changing until the day he said good-bye.
