THE VIEW FROM HERE

THE VIEW FROM HEREZpLEARNING HOW TO zLive

BY EMILY MORRISON

MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE I work with teens daily, scroll through Facebook nightly and call my mom incessantly, but most days I find myself enmeshed in interesting conversation.

I’m not debating the state of our union or anything. Often, my interactions could be classified as lively, idle chit-chat over something on the spectrum between teen angst and aging parents.

I ask people how they’re doing, they ask me and we spill the tea. Daily struggles and triumphs, we sip through it all, then move on.

One girl’s fighting with her brother and another’s boyfriend doesn’t text back quick enough. Mom’s caught a cold. Dad’s back’s acting up. Sister’s dog had surgery.

A day later, the girls are laughing, Mom’s feeling better, Dad’s doing his stretches, and Finn’s healing just fine.

Isn’t that how it goes? The highs and lows, they’re all part of being human, and I love being human. I suppose that’s also why I love stories.

They remind me that we’re all on the same path, trying to find meaning and joy in our lives. We share different versions of the same narrative.

We live. We struggle. We overcome, hopefully. Then, we die.

Yeah, that’s the kicker, isn’t it? I keep knocking up against that last part, too.

At night, when I’m trying to recall my favorite tales, it’s the sad, real-life tragedies that won’t let me rest.

One of my friends has stage four metastatic breast cancer. Another recently passed away from ovarian cancer. Yet another just lost his wife to COVID-19. This list of loss and heartache goes on until sleep is no longer an option.

So, I grab my diary and make myself get all this fear out.

I write about how death is a bullet no one can dodge. Even if we live like we’re moving targets, none of us can keep moving forever.

Life ends, so I must learn how to be brave like my friends, how to be hopeful, how to count my blessings and not wait for tragedy to strike, to be grateful for what and who I have.

“Don’t worry so much. Live!” I remind myself. I scrawl out a short list of “Things To Do,” like my mother taught me to when I feel overwhelmed. 1. Keep learning. 2. Do better. 3. Love harder. 4. Give more. 5. Be grateful.

I say, “Amen,” close my diary and go to bed.

Usually, this works. Writing centers me, helps me focus on what I can do and then let the rest go, until the next loss or sobering news hits.

Then, the fear comes back.

The thought of losing people I love as well as my own life, this worry never really leaves me. It’s real, and it’s usually something I don’t talk about.

Who’s comfortable talking about death? Surprisingly, the answer is teens.

A few years ago, I started reading “Tuesdays With Morrie” with my seniors, a memoir Mitch Albom wrote after a series of conversations he had with his dying sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz.

I show my students clips of Ted Koppel interviewing Morrie on “Nightline” and ask them, “What would you do if you were given Morrie’s diagnosis? How do you think you’d feel?”

And they talk about death.

They relive the car crashes and near misses they’ve been in. They mention their grandparents who’ve passed away and their neighbors who are sick from something.

They tell me what they’d do with their time left. Few would come back to school. Most would take a trip somewhere warm.

As their eyes light up I ask, “Are you sure this subject isn’t too dark, kiddos?”

“No. We should talk about it,” they say. “It’s cool to think about how you wanna live!”

So they keep going. They talk about all the cool things they want to do with their lives, and they teach me that I’ve been thinking about this dying thing all wrong.

Maybe my fear has nothing to do with how and when my life ends, but how and why I’m living it. I pen a new mantra in my diary.

“Learn how to live.”

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