Chapter 2 about the teacher, one

In the summer of 1994, he was sentenced to death.But looking back, Murray had a bad premonition long before that.The day he stopped dancing, he knew it. My old professor has always loved dancing.The music didn't matter, whether it was rock, big band or blues, he had it all.He will close his eyes, with a happy smile on his face, and start dancing rhythmically.He wasn't the most beautiful dancer, but he didn't worry about his partner because Murray danced solo. He would go to the church in Harvard Square every Wednesday night to participate in a program called Freedom Dance.There were lighting effects and deafening speakers in the venue. When Murray walked into the venue, most of the people in the venue were young students.He was wearing a white T-shirt and black slacks, with a towel around his neck.No matter what music is playing, he always hears and dances, from Giruba to Jimmy.He can dance to Jimi Hendrix.He twisted and twisted and swayed, his hands flying like a conductor on drugs, until he was sweating and his back was drenched.No one in the meeting knew that he was an outstanding sociology professor who had taught at the university for many years and had written many acclaimed books. They just thought he was an old madman.

Once he brought a tango tape and asked them to play it, and then he acted as a guide, walking around the venue like a big Latin lover.When the music ended, everyone applauded, but he still had more to say and his face was bright. But there will be a day when all the singing and dancing will end in life. In his sixties he began to suffer from asthma, which made it difficult to breathe.One day he was walking along the Charles River when a biting cold wind suddenly blew in his face, which made him out of breath.He was rushed to hospital where he was given epinephrine injections. After another few years, he began to have mobility problems.Once at a friend's birthday party, he fell for no reason.Another night he fell down the steps of a theater, terrifying the crowd.Someone shouted: Get out of the way, don't surround yourself!

He was seventy by this time, so people just whispered that he was old and helped him get up again.But Murray knew himself better than most people. He knew that something was wrong, and it wasn't just a phenomenon of old age.He was tired all the time, couldn't sleep well, and dreamed that he was dead. He started to see a doctor and searched everywhere for a good doctor.The doctor did a blood test, a urine test, and a rectal scope through the anus, but they couldn't find anything wrong.The last doctor performed a biochemical test on his muscle tissue section, taking a small sample from the back of Murray's calf.The test results concluded that it was a problem with nerve conduction, so Murray underwent a series of tests.In one test, he sat in a special chair, gave him electric shocks (a bit like sitting in an electric chair), and recorded his nervous system responses.

After seeing the test results, the doctor said: We need to do further examinations. Murray asked: Why?what's going on? We're not sure yet.Your time is slower. His time is slower?What does it mean? Finally, on a hot, humid day in August 1994, Murray and his wife, Charlotte, went to a neurologist's office, and the doctor told them to sit down before giving them the bad news: Murray had muscle pain. Atrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a terrible and unforgiving neurological disease with no cure. Murray asked: Why do I have this disease?

Nobody knows. Has the disease reached its terminal stage? Yes. So I'm dying? The doctor said, sorry, yes. The doctor sat and talked with Murray and Charlotte for nearly two hours, patiently answering their various questions.As they were leaving, the doctor gave them information about ALS, a few pamphlets, as if they were about to open a bank account.Walking outside, the sun was shining brightly, and everyone was busy with their own affairs. A woman ran to the parking meter in a panic to insert coins, and another woman was carrying large and small bags of groceries.Thousands of thoughts swirled in Charlotte's head: How much time do we have left?How do we face it?How are we going to pay for medical bills?

At the same time, my teacher was amazed and puzzled: Why is everything around me normal?Shouldn't the world stop?Don't they know what happened to me? However, the world didn't stop, and the world didn't care at all, and when Murray weakly opened the car door and sat down, he felt as if he had fallen into a bottomless pit. He thought: what should I do now? While my teacher was thinking hard about the answer, the illness came back day after day, week after week.He backed the car out of the garage one morning and could barely hit the brakes.He has never been able to drive again.

He kept falling, so he bought a cane.He could no longer move freely. He went swimming at the YMCA as usual, but found he could no longer change his own clothes.So he hired his first family caregiver, a seminary student named Tony, to help him in and out of the pool and into and out of his bathing suit.In the dressing room, others pretended not to be looking at him, but they still looked at him.He has no privacy anymore. In the fall of 1994, Murray arrived on the rolling Brandeis campus to teach his last college class.Of course he doesn't have to teach this class, the school will understand, why suffer this in front of so many students?Stay home and mind your own business.But it never occurred to Murray to quit teaching.

Murray staggered into the classroom, which was his home for more than thirty years.He leaned on crutches, and it took him a while to get to the chair.He finally sat down, took his glasses off the bridge of his nose, and looked at the young faces staring at him. Friends, I think you are all here for a social psychology class.I've taught this class for twenty years, and this is the first time I'm going to say that taking this class is a risk because I have a fatal disease.I may not be able to teach until the end of the semester. If you feel inappropriate, you can give up the elective, and I will understand.

He smiled. He never had any more secrets. ALS is like a candle. It melts away your nerves and leaves your body like a puddle of wax.The disease often begins in the legs and spreads upwards.You lose control of your thigh muscles, so you can no longer stand.You lose control of your trunk muscles, so you can no longer sit upright.At the end of the day if you're still alive, you'll have your throat pierced and you'll be breathing through a tube, and you'll be sane, locked up in a limp stinking bag, maybe able to blink your eyelids or click your tongue The sound is like the plot in a sci-fi movie, the whole person is trapped in his own body.From getting sick to this stage, it only takes five short years.

Murray's doctor said he had about two years to live. Murray himself knew that there were less than two years left. But my teacher made a big decision, one that he'd been thinking about since he came out of the clinic that day and learned that his life was at stake.He asked himself: Am I going to languish day by day, or am I making the most of the time I have left? He doesn't want to wither and wither, and he doesn't want to be ashamed to see people because he is not far from death. He wants to find another way, to make death the final project of his life, the focus of his remaining years.Since man is mortal, he's worth a lot, isn't he?He can study death as a living lesson.Study my slow death, watch what happens to me, learn with me.

Murray is going to walk the last bridge between life and death, and leave a record of his trip. The fall semester is over quickly.He took more and more medicines, and medical treatment became routine.Nurses came home to help Murray move his shrinking legs, to move the muscles, to bend and stretch his legs back and forth, like pumping water.The masseuse comes once a week because he has always felt his muscles are heavy and stiff, and a massage can help relieve them.He learned from a meditation teacher, closing his eyes and concentrating until the whole world is just breathing, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. One day he was walking on the sidewalk from home with a cane, but fell down in the street. Since then, he has changed his cane to a walking frame.As he was getting weaker, going to the toilet became too tiring, so Murray started using the potty.He has to support himself on his hands when he urinates, so someone else has to hold the potty. Most people would be embarrassed by that, especially someone as old as Murray, but Murray wasn't like most people.When some of his colleagues and friends came to visit, he would ask: Listen, I have to pee, would you mind helping?Are you okay with this? They often surprise themselves with their willingness to lend a hand. In fact, his number of visitors is increasing, making him overwhelmed.He presides over several groups discussing death, where everyone discusses the real meaning of death, and talks about the fact that people in the world are always afraid of death, but they don't necessarily understand its meaning.He said to his friends that if they really want to help him, they should not sympathize with him, but visit him more, call him more, and discuss their problems with him, just like everyone got along in the past, because Murray has always been very good listener. Although Murray was tormented by illness, his voice was still powerful and magnetic, and there were thousands of thoughts in his mind.He wanted to prove that dying people are not necessarily useless people. The new year comes and goes.Although Murray didn't tell anyone, he knew that this was the last year of his life.He has to sit in a wheelchair now, and he fights for time to tell everyone he loves what he says in his heart.Murray attended the funeral of a colleague at Brandeis University who died suddenly of a heart attack, and came home devastated. What a pity, he said, that so many people had said so many good things, and Owen himself couldn't hear them. Murray was unwilling to suffer the same fate.He was on the phone everywhere, making appointments with people.On a cold Sunday afternoon, a small group of friends and family gathered at his home for a living funeral.Everyone said something, tribute to my old professor, some cried, some laughed, and one lady recited a poem: ∮ my dear and affectionate friend your eternal heart Adding annual rings in the long stream of time gentle metasequoia Murray laughed and cried with them.The heartfelt words we would never say to the one we love, Murray confessed on this day.The funeral of his life can be said to be a great success. Only Murray wasn't dead yet. In fact, the most extraordinary experience of his life is only now beginning.