Mitch Albom

You're 37 years old and perfectly healthy and he's 78 years old and dying and he's 10 times happier with his life than you are.

And something's wrong with that picture.

And so I started to go back and I did not realize it at the time, but that was the pivot moment in my life for everything that has come since.

I probably realized it most poignantly in airports because I, as I mentioned, I've been on ESPN regularly for years prior to that.

So my face was recognizable to a lot of people.

particularly sports fans.

And I used to get stopped in airports and people would say, hey, sports guy.

You know, sometimes that's all they would call me, sports guy.

You know, or sometimes they'd say, Mitch, who's going to win the Super Bowl?

And I would just say, you know, the New England Patriots and get on the escalator and keep going.

Because first of all, the answer was always the Patriots back then.

So that was easy.

And secondly, that's all they wanted from me.

And then I began to notice that people would come up to me with a different sort of tone.

They would say, you're Mitch Albom, right?

And I'd say, yeah.

My mother died of cancer.

And the last thing we did was read Tuesdays with Maury together.

Can I talk to you about her?

And you can't say New England Patriots and get on the escalator.