“Not for me,” Morrie said, dismissing it.

In all the time he was sick, Morrie never held out hope he would be cured. He was realistic to a fault. One time, I asked if someone were to wave a magic wand and make him all better, would he become, in time, the man he had been before?

He shook his head. “No way I could go back. I am a different self now. I’m different in my attitudes. I’m dif­ferent appreciating my body, which I didn’t do fully be­fore. I’m different in terms of trying to grapple with the big questions, the ultimate questions, the ones that won’t go away.

“That’s the thing, you see. Once you get your fingers on the important questions, you can’t turn away from them.”

And which are the important questions?

“As I see it, they have to do with love, responsibility, spirituality, awareness. And if I were healthy today, those would still be my issues. They should have been all along.”

I tried to imagine Morrie healthy. I tried to imagine him pulling the covers from his body, stepping from that chair, the two of us going for a walk around the neighbor­hood, the way we used to walk around campus. I sud­denly realized it had been sixteen years since I’d seen him standing up. Sixteen years?

What if you had one day perfectly healthy, I asked? What would you do?

“Twenty-four hours?” Twenty-four hours.

“Let’s see … I’d get up in the morning, do my exercises, have a lovely breakfast of sweet rolls and tea, go for a swim, then have my friends come over for a nice lunch. I’d have them come one or two at a time so we could talk about their families, their issues, talk about how much we mean to each other.

“Then I’d like to go for a walk, in a garden with some trees, watch their colors, watch the birds, take in the nature that I haven’t seen in so long now.

“In the evening, we’d all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta, maybe some duck—I love duck­and then we’d dance the rest of the night. I’d dance with all the wonderful dance partners out there, until I was exhausted. And then I’d go home and have a deep, won­derful sleep.”

That’s it?

“That’s it.”

It was so simple. So average. I was actually a little disappointed. I figured he’d fly to Italy or have lunch with the President or romp on the seashore or try every exotic thing he could think of. After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot—how could he find perfection in such an average day?

Then I realized this was the whole point.

Before I left that day, Morrie asked if he could bring up a topic.

“Your brother,” he said.

I felt a shiver. I do not know how Morrie knew this was on my mind. I had been trying to call my brother in Spain for weeks, and had learned—from a friend of his­that he was flying back and forth to a hospital in Amster­dam.

“Mitch, I know it hurts when you can’t be with someone you love. But you need to be at peace with his desires. Maybe he doesn’t want you interrupting your life. Maybe he can’t deal with that burden. I tell everyone I know to carry on with the life they know—don’t ruin it because I am dying.”

But he’s my brother, I said.

“I know,” Morrie said. “That’s why it hurts.”

I saw Peter in my mind when he was eight years old, his curly blond hair puffed into a sweaty ball atop his head. I saw us wrestling in the yard next to our house, the grass stains soaking through the knees of our jeans. I saw him singing songs in front of the mirror, holding a brush as a microphone, and I saw us squeezing into the attic where we hid together as children, testing our parents’ will to find us for dinner.

And then I saw him as the adult who had drifted away, thin and frail, his face bony from the chemotherapy treatments.

Morrie, I said. Why doesn’t he want to see me?

My old professor sighed. “There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.

“In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you’re too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.

“You’ve had these special times with your brother, and you no longer have what you had with him. You want them back. You never want them to stop. But that’s part of being human. Stop, renew, stop, renew.”

I looked at him. I saw all the death in the world. I felt helpless.

“You’ll find a way back to your brother,” Morrie said.

How do you know?

Morrie smiled. “You found me, didn’t you?”

It was cold and damp as I walked up the steps to Morrie’s house. I took in little details, things I hadn’t noticed for all the times I’d visited. The cut of the hill. The stone facade of the house. The pachysandra plants, the low shrubs. I walked slowly, taking my time, stepping on dead wet leaves that flattened beneath my feet.

Charlotte had called the day before to tell me Morrie was not doing well.” This was her way of saying the final days had arrived. Morrie had canceled all of his appoint­ments and had been sleeping much of the time, which was unlike him. He never cared for sleeping, not when there were people he could talk with.

“He wants you to come visit,” Charlotte said, “but, Mitch …”

Yes?

“He’s very weak.”

The porch steps. The glass in the front door. I ab­sorbed these things in a slow, observant manner, as if seeing them for the first time. I felt the tape recorder in the bag on my shoulder, and I unzipped it to make sure I had tapes. I don’t know why. I always had tapes.

Connie answered the bell. Normally buoyant, she had a drawn look on her face. Her hello was softly spoken.

“How’s he doing?” I said.

“Not so good.” She bit her lower lip. “I don’t like to think about it. He’s such a sweet man, you know?”

I knew.

“This is such a shame.”

Charlotte came down the hall and hugged me. She said that Morrie was still sleeping, even though it was 10 A.M. We went into the kitchen. I helped her straighten up, noticing all the bottles of pills, lined up on the table, a small army of brown plastic soldiers with white caps. My old professor was taking morphine now to ease his breath­ing.

I put the food I had brought with me into the refrig­erator—soup, vegetable cakes, tuna salad. I apologized to Charlotte for bringing it. Morrie hadn’t chewed food like this in months, we both knew that, but it had become a small tradition. Sometimes, when you’re losing someone, you hang on to whatever tradition you can.

I waited in the living room, where Morrie and Ted Koppel had done their first interview. I read the newspa­per that was lying on the table. Two Minnesota children had shot each other playing with their fathers’ guns. A baby had been found buried in a garbage can in an alley in Los Angeles.