Tuesdays with Nana by Marissa

Tuesdays with Nana by Marissa - October 2023 Scholarship Essay

We live in an age where reading is highly overlooked. Reading never striked me as an extracurricular activity; however, in some high schools, students are required to do summer reading; something that is dreadful for many of them. Of course, we are given several choices for books, so I skimmed through the book summaries and was intrigued by one in particular, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. Upon retrieving the book, it took time for me to become invested in the storyline however, I quickly picked up reading it.
Mitch Albom attended Brandeis University where he met his intelligent sociology professor, Morrie Shwartz. Mitch grew very close to Morrie, promising that after he graduated, he would keep in contact; unfortunately, that fell to be untrue until Mitch discovered Morrie was terminally ill. Morrie dedicated his life to education so despite his illness, he decided to continue teaching his last course; however, this was not the typical college course; no grades or exams were given, students were given the objective to discover the meaning of life.
Every Tuesday, hence the title of the book; Mitch would visit his old professor, trying to make up for all the time he promised to keep in touch. Each week, Morrie would provide Mitch with his life stories and values. They would both go back and forth reminiscing when they were in school together and discuss touchy subjects such as if Morrie was envious of younger or healthier people to which he responds, “The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I'm thirty-seven-year-old, I'm fifty-seven-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! How can I be envious of where you are-when I’ve been there myself?”
The irony of this book for me was that up until I finished the book, I realized I visited my grandma every Tuesday before she passed. Similarly to Mitch and Morrie, we would reminisce of all the memories we shared such as catching ladybugs, going on shopping sprees or when she sat in a drive-thru for ten minutes because she mistook a trash can for a speaker. I didn’t realize it but Tuesdays with Morrie had a large impact on my grieving process. While reading the book over the summer, I photographed quotes that stood out to me, one of them being, “There is a tribe in the North American Arctic, for example, who believe that all things on earth have a soul that exists in a miniature form of the body that holds it-so that a deer has a tiny deer inside it, and a man has a tiny man inside him. When the large beings die, that tiny form lives on. It can slide into something being born nearby, or it can go to a temporary resting place in the sky, in the belly of a great feminine spirit, where it waits until the moon can send it back to earth.” A month after my grandma's passing, I stumbled on this quote. I felt so isolated, depressed and lost after losing my grandma because she was such a part of my life however, I slowly began to notice how ladybugs would always find me which led me to believe she took the place of a ladybug to remind me she has never left me.