I've just finished reading a book entitled Tuesday’s With Morrie. It is about an older professor with Lou Gehrig's disease, who regains touch with one of his favorite students, Mitch Albom, who found out about Morrie's diagnosis when he appeared on television. Mitch starts to visit Morrie every Tuesday. Mostly, they talk about the meaning of life and the acceptance of death by the living.

The novel touched a special place in my heart and made me look at my life from a different perspective. I have a Morrie, too. My good friend Sharon, who is older than I am, is my mentor. She died of Pancreatic Cancer two years ago. I vividly remember one of our conversations in particular. We were driving around on a warm fall day in Ohio, talking about exactly what truth The Bible contains. She had said, "Don’t you think the gospels are just stories that try to teach people how to live life."

I agreed. "I don't think they actually happened. They are just a model for instructing people's actions." We talked mostly about Noah’s Ark and Genesis.

“How could such ethnic diversity have been produced from only two people without?"

I was not sure and I thought about it for a long time. I responded with, "Probably because it's just a story. Anything can happen in fiction."

Neither of us went to church regularly but we did go once in awhile. She was a Catholic, but not year round, and I was was more familiar with Christianity than anything else. One day I went with her to church because she asked and I knew it would mean a lot to her. After we left a discussion came up about life after death. I said that, "all theories of life after death are just ideas, but I like the idea of being reincarnated."

"I would like to be a butterfly."

"I think that most people choose a butterfly when they talk about being reincarnated because they are docile, metamorphic and beautiful. It is a classical symbol of resurrection,” I responded.

We were close until she decided to move to Kentucky. Later, I moved to Florida and we grew apart. I called and tried to see her as much as possible when I would fly up to Ohio. One Christmas I was snowed in at my family's and couldn't visit Sharon. She told me that she was in the hospital but that her condition wasn't really serious. She had cancer for the third time. Chemotherapy had kept it in remission for a while. She was always so brave and didn't want to burden others with her problems.

I went to visit her in February and by then the cancer had almost completely over taken her body. Her husband, Warner, told me, "it is really bad and she can't stay awake very long to talk." I went in and she was so excited to see me.

She could barley speak but I remember one thing she asked me. "Do you think I’ll go to heaven when I die?"

I thought about the conversations we had and replied, “Yes, I believe you'll go there. No one deserves to more than you. Do you want to be reincarnated as a butterfly, still?”

She chuckled. "I think that would be nice."

She fell asleep after that for the rest of the day. I meant every word I had said.

A few weeks after my visit I got the phone call I had been dreading. Sharon is the best person I have ever met. Although I didn't know if heaven was the right place for her, I knew that where ever she was, she would be happy to know that she left behind people who love her.

Later, I asked myself, "why didn't I realize how sick she really was?" Morrie felt lucky because he got to say goodbye to the people he loved and his family had time to say their goodbyes to him. In the book Mitch had fourteen Tuesdays to spend with Morrie and absorb his knowledge. I only had one day; one freaking day. I regret every day not knowing how sick she really was and not going to see her more. I am very envious of Mitch, "why couldn’t I have those thirteen extra visits?" I asked myself, "why didn’t I go see her at Christmas when she could actually talk?” I sometimes wonder if Sharon was trying to hold on so I could come say goodbye. She knew I loved her; I know that now.

The book inundated me with thoughts and emotions. I consider myself lucky that I had one day, plus all of the time I spent with her before she was sick. I also got to say goodbye in my own way. I had a new outlook after reading the book; it changed my life. What is the meaning of life? It is the question that no one has a correct answer for.