sions that aid him in his own life like the importance of family, "If you don't have the support and love and caring concern that you get from a family, you don't have much at all...Love each other or perish" (Albom, 1997, p. 91).
I think that Mitch explains the great respect and admiration he holds for his former professor to the degree that he would have listened to Morrie even if he had not been dying. However, because Morrie is dying it has an impact on Mitch that does make him listen more deeply and with greater urgency. Because of Morrie's impending death, he becomes a valuable resource to others in his commitment to face his demise with dignity and as full of life as possible, "Since he was going to die, he could be of great value...He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip" (Albom, 1997, p. 10). When someone is dying their words do take on a sense or urgency and deeper meaning for listeners. In this sense they can penetrate beyond the barriers we might normally have constructed to hearing well. We see Mitch's sense of urgency to be able to communicate with Morrie when he realizes Morrie's death is imminent. As he says after feeling Morrie's limp body in his hands when lifting him into bed, "I felt the seeds of death inside his shriveling frame, and as I laid him in his chair, adjustin
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