Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the best of my time left?..
He would not wither. He would not be ashamed of dying.

ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax..
you cannot support yourself standing.. you cannot sit up straight.
By the end, if you are still alive.. your soul, perfectly awake, is imprisoned inside a limp husk.. like something from a science fiction movie, the man frozen inside his own flesh.

That was the end of his driving..
That was the end of his walking free..
That was the end of his privacy..
And that was the end of his secret.

Morrie had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's disease, a brutal, unforgiving illness of the neurological system.
There was no known cure.

Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have.
I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy.

His eyes were more sunken than I remembered them, and his cheekbones more pronounced. This gave him a harsher, older look - until he smiled, of course, and the sagging cheeks gathered up like curtains.