Tuesdays with Morrie

For this assignment, we had to find a comic stip online that has to do with the book we're currently reading, Tuedays with Morrie. Along with the comic strip, we had to write a reflection. Here's the comic I used to relate the book with:
http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/store/add.php?iid=11415#second

In the book Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch sees that Morrie’s body is becoming less and less productive as the disease, ALS, gets worse. Morrie’s body starts to deteriorate by the use of his legs being taken away, his speech isn’t well, he’s becoming very thin, and it is hard for him to swallow. In this comic strip I picked, which shows a tooth fairy visiting an old man with dentures. The old man shows that as people get older, their body becomes less and less productive because it is getting old and can’t work as well. Although Morrie’s disease is what is causing his body to deteriorate, it also has to do with him being old. His body isn’t strong enough to fight the disease, so the disease takes over his body. What happens to Morrie as the disease gets worse, like not being able to move his legs or arms at all and not being able to talk, shows what most people go through as they get near the end of their days. I think this comic also has to do with the subject of death. The old man shows that death will arrive soon because his body is starting to fail, even if it’s just him losing his teeth. Morrie tries to explain to Mitch that what’s happening to his body is part of the disease and it’s only going to get worse as the disease spreads. He also tells Mitch what he should expect happen to him and what he will and will not be able to do. He tells Mitch that everyone gets old and will eventually die. Morrie wants Mitch to understand that he shouldn’t mourn over the fact that he’s dying, but to celebrate the time he has left of his life. Everyone’s body goes through deterioration as they get older and are about to die, whether it’s from a disease or natural causes, and people have to accept that dying is part of life.
The topic of aging reminds me of when my grandfather’s body started failing. When I was young I remember him being full of life. He would love to play baseball with my cousins and my brother and I in my grandparent’s backyard. In 2004, he showed signs of aging. He had trouble walking and it would take a few people to help him up and down stairs. My grandma couldn’t take care of him at home because it would have been too much for her, so we put him in a convalescent home. Each time when I visited him there, I always noticed something different about how he was deteriorating. He would eat less and less as time went on and he became very thin. All the adults in my family would encourage him to eat by saying, “You need to eat to get your strength back, and when you get your strength back, you could come back home.” He never responded to that probably because he never heard it. He had always had a hard time hearing for a while even before he was put in the convalescent home. My grandmother visited him every day, except for one or two days, from the day he was put in the convalescent home until the day he died. She wanted to spend as much time as she could with him because she didn’t know which day was going to be his last day on Earth. After many months, all my grandfather could do was lie in bed and sleep. We all knew that it was a matter of time before he was going to die. Even though my grandfather didn’t show aging by losing his teeth like the man in the comic, there were several other factors that showed he was aging and death was coming soon for him.