I’m re-reading Tuesdays with Morrie right now. I have a few more pages to go but I feel I can write about it because a) I’ve read it before; and b) anybody can figure out how it ends. So no spoilers here: Morrie dies in the end.

Tuesdays with Morrie is part of my (Death or) Near Death Collection. This book is shelved, if not physically on my bookshelf (because remember I did that color thing with my bookshelves), in my head along with When Breath Becomes Air and The Last Lecture. All three of these books deal with the imminence of death and what we can learn from it.

Death is not really a subject I shy away from. Just yesterday, I went for coffee with an older friend and we talked about how we both aren’t drinking as much coffee anymore but choosing to really enjoy the ones we have left in our lifetime caffeine budget. I fully embrace the concept that Neil Pasricha explores on his 3 Books podcast: we only live for about 1000 months, so let’s read the best 1000 books out there. And my husband and I religiously watch and read murder mysteries together: right now it’s Criminal Minds at supper and Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache Series before bed.

It was on this very day that I’m publishing this blog post 37 years ago that I was first confronted with the complete unreasonableness of death when an 18-year old friend – the most popular girl in school with all of her unlived life ahead of her – was killed in a car accident. Everything stopped. Every moment I had had with her, I tried desperately to remember. Every waking moment was pain and fear at the thought of death cutting short such a vibrant living person. I was acutely aware that It Could Have Been Me.

It’s that imminence that Morrie wanted his audience to whom Mitch Albom was writing to keep in mind. Morrie had learned the lesson early – by nature of just being a very thoughtful person – that money and ambition aren’t the things that matter in the end. Although I chuckle at the Joan Rivers’ line, “People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made,” – I suspect that Morrie is the one who is right and that even Joan knew it, too. Everyone knows that money can buy you a nice car, a big house and a lot of pizza, but in the end, Morrie could no longer drive, he lived in his wheelchair and he could no longer eat solid food. It’s not a great advertisement for a book, but the gold is there, demonstrated firsthand between the author Mitch and his old professor, Morrie, who meet on Tuesdays so Morrie could teach his last class. His thesis? That the real riches in life is relationship, for however long that might be. And Morrie lived that way, long before Life had sent him an eviction notice.

Don’t wait till you’re old to stop caring about the things that don’t matter and to start caring about the things that do.