We settled into the darkened studio. Mitch Albom and me. I have no idea why my radio station’s studios were inner sanctums of sound. Technological caves, their dimmed lights had no bright settings, and, thankfully, an absence of pinging notifications.
Each time we interviewed, all else vanished. We moved from the non-fiction – Tuesdays with Morrie – to fiction – The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Mitch’s journey resonated with mine.
It struck me when he told me that he figured he’d spend the first half of his writing life in the real world, and the second half, he would make it up. Fiction.
I, too, was clearly in my second half, and I hadn’t yet written the book I’d felt was inside me, begging to be scribed. The memoir, based on what I’d learned from hundreds of authors, was then still a promise to my seven-year-old self.
What that little girl had learned was that it was dangerous to speak out, to use my voice, to attract any attention. When I moved from written journalism as a teen and in my early twenties, to radio, I could still be invisible. There, invisible, I could have my voice, speak the truth, communicate the news. But, in those days, I could also remain invisible. To be an open book, though, literally – to write that memoir – ooh, that was tricky.
We learn so much in the writing. Mitch told me that around the time he reconnected with his old professor Morrie, who was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he was a 100-hour a week sportswriter. Morrie told Mitch he needed to slow down and reprioritize his life.
What came out of that journey was Mitch’s message that one person can affect a lot of people, even when you can’t even imagine it. Out of Mitch visiting his aging, ill college professor, he wrote Tuesdays with Morrie to help Morrie pay his medical bills. As a result, instead of a few dozen students in his classroom, Morrie has millions. Morrie has affected millions of people, long after he’s gone.
It takes courage to put our words on a page, to do the work we are designed by divinity to do. When Mitch Albom writes his fiction, he slides his real people into his characters. And then real people come running up to him in airports to tell how much those words impacted their own life circumstances. That’s what I want to create, too, with BookMarks: From Mitch Albom to Gary Zukav, How I Saved My Life By Interviewing Authors I’ve Known (And, Sometimes Loved)
I’ve wondered along the way, how do we thread together all the different pieces of our lives? My mind edits and I hear from pieces to peace.