LANCASTER, Pa. — Avid readers may know sports journalist-turned-author Mitch Albom from his weekly column, radio show, or his books -- including "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" or "For One Day."
But it was his first true memoir entitled "Tuesdays with Morrie" that turned his personal life into the highest-selling memoir in history at nearly 20 million copies to date, a television movie with Jack Lemmon and a stage play.
Back in the 1990s, Albom turned on his television one night to an episode of ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel. There, he saw a familiar face in his professor, Morrie Schwartz.
Schwartz had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease. He decided it was time to teach a class, and then the world, his own lesson about life, death and grief.
"Everybody knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it," said Peter Delaurier, who plays the latest production of "Tuesdays with Morrie" at the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster.
"He wants to help people get ready for it," Delaurier said. "He decided through the interviews with Ted Koppel to extend the influence as far as he possibly could."
That interview turned into a phone call, and then a visit. That visit turned into regular Tuesday meetings with Morrie, which eventually led to the best-selling memoir towards the end of Schwartz's life.
Fast forward three decades and hundreds of productions of the play all around the world, Delaurier and Jared Michael Delaney, who plays Albom at the Fulton Theatre, continue to tell Albom and Schwartz's story.
"We all experience grief. As they say, no one gets out of here alive," Delaney said.
Albom's character in the play tackles the opposite side of grief.
"We're all going to lose someone we love," Delaney said. "We're all going to be lost to someone we love."
It's a process our version of Morrie knows all too well, losing his wife of more than forty years a decade ago. Peter Delaurier's 52nd wedding anniversary would have been this May.
"I think that's the worst thing that can happen to you, not dying yourself," Delaurier said. "It's made me much more aware of my own death, the fact that it's coming and the fact that it can be any worse than what I've done."
The two men find some humor in the play as well, and by extension the entire grief process. They believe it's a natural reaction to temper an otherwise overwhelming emotion.
"It's an essential component to that process," Delaney said.
Both men also hope audience members feel a "good ache" when they leave the theatre, while perhaps remembering someone they love.
"[Grief is] not a bad thing. It's just a part of life," Delaney said.
"Morrie continues to have a profound influence on people who knew and come to know him," Delaurier said.
Performances of "Tuesdays with Morrie" at the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster run through April 14. For more information, visit their website.