The Five People You Meet in Heaven Read online

  The Five People You Meet in Heaven

  Mitch Albom

  Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years—from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge—so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.

  Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his—and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.

  One by one, Eddie’s five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.

  In The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom gives us an astoundingly original story that will change everything you’ve ever thought about the afterlife—and the meaning of our lives here on earth. With a timeless tale, appealing to all, this is a book that readers of fine fiction, and those who loved Tuesdays with Morrie, will treasure.

  The Five People You Meet in Heaven

  by Mitch Albom

  This book is dedicated to Edward Beitchman, my beloved uncle, who gave me my first concept of heaven. Every year, around the Thanksgiving table, he spoke of a night in the hospital when he awoke to see the souls of his departed loved ones sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him. I never forgot that story. And I never forgot him.

  Everyone has an idea of heaven, as do most religions, and they should all be respected. The version represented here is only a guess, a wish, in some ways, that my uncle, and others like him—people who felt unimportant here on earth—realize, finally, how much they mattered and how they were loved.

  The End

  This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.

  The last hour of Eddie’s life was spent, like most of the others, at Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. The park had the usual attractions, a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, roller coasters, bumper cars, a taffy stand, and an arcade where you could shoot streams of water into a clown’s mouth. It also had a big new ride called Freddy’s Free Fall, and this would be where Eddie would be killed, in an accident that would make newspapers around the state.

  At the time of his death, Eddie was a squat, white-haired old man, with a short neck, a barrel chest, thick forearms, and a faded army tattoo on his right shoulder. His legs were thin and veined now, and his left knee, wounded in the war, was ruined by arthritis. He used a cane to get around. His face was broad and craggy from the sun, with salty whiskers and a lower jaw that protruded slightly, making him look prouder than he felt. He kept a cigarette behind his left ear and a ring of keys hooked to his belt. He wore rubber-soled shoes. He wore an old linen cap. His pale brown uniform suggested a workingman, and a workingman he was.

  Eddie’s job was “maintaining” the rides, which really meant keeping them safe. Every afternoon, he walked the park, checking on each attraction, from the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Pipeline Plunge. He looked for broken boards, loose bolts, worn-out steel. Sometimes he would stop, his eyes glazing over, and people walking past thought something was wrong. But he was listening, that’s all. After all these years he could hear trouble, he said, in the spits and stutters and thrumming of the equipment.

  With 50 minutes left on earth, Eddie took his last walk along Ruby Pier. He passed an elderly couple.

  “Folks,” he mumbled, touching his cap.

  They nodded politely. Customers knew Eddie. At least the regular ones did. They saw him summer after summer, one of those faces you associate with a place. His work shirt had a patch on the chest that read EDDIE above the word MAINTENANCE, and sometimes they would say, “Hiya, Eddie Maintenance,” although he never thought that was funny.

  Today, it so happened, was Eddie’s birthday, his 83rd. A doctor, last week, had told him he had shingles. Shingles? Eddie didn’t even know what they were. Once, he had been strong enough to lift a carousel horse in each arm. That was a long time ago.

  “Eddie!” … “Take me, Eddie!” … “Take me!”

  Forty minutes until his death. Eddie made his way to the front of the roller coaster line. He rode every attraction at least once a week, to be certain the brakes and steering were solid. Today was coaster day—the “Ghoster Coaster” they called this one—and the kids who knew Eddie yelled to get in the cart with him.

  Children liked Eddie. Not teenagers. Teenagers gave him headaches. Over the years, Eddie figured he’d seen every sort of do-nothing, snarl-at-you teenager there was. But children were different. Children looked at Eddie—who, with his protruding lower jaw, always seemed to be grinning, like a dolphin—and they trusted him. They drew in like cold hands to a fire. They hugged his leg. They played with his keys. Eddie mostly grunted, never saying much. He figured it was because he didn’t say much that they liked him.

  Thirty minutes left.

  “Hey, happy birthday, I hear,” Dominguez said.

  Eddie grunted.

  “No party or nothing?”

  Eddie looked at him as if he were crazy. For a moment he thought how strange it was to be growing old in a place that smelled of cotton candy.

  “Well, remember, Eddie, I’m off next week, starting Monday. Going to Mexico.”

  Eddie nodded, and Dominguez did a little dance.

  “Me and Theresa. Gonna see the whole family. Par-r-r-ty.”

  He stopped dancing when he noticed Eddie staring.

  “You ever been?” Dominguez said.

  “Been?”

  “To Mexico?”

  Eddie exhaled through his nose. “Kid, I never been anywhere I wasn’t shipped to with a rifle.”

  He watched Dominguez return to the sink. He thought for a moment. Then he took a small wad of bills from his pocket and removed the only twenties he had, two of them. He held them out.

  “Get your wife something nice,” Eddie said.

  Dominguez regarded the money, broke into a huge smile, and said, “C’mon, man. You sure?”

  Eddie pushed the money into Dominguez’s palm. Then he walked out back to the storage area. A small “fishing hole” had been cut into the boardwalk planks years ago, and Eddie lifted the plastic cap. He tugged on a nylon line that dropped 80 feet to the sea. A piece of bologna was still attached.

  “We catch anything?” Dominguez yelled. “Tell me we caught something!”

  Eddie wondered how the guy could be so optimistic. There was never anything on that line.

  “One day,” Dominguez yelled, “we’re gonna get a halibut!”

  “Yep,” Eddie mumbled, although he knew you could never pull a fish that big through a hole that small.

  Twenty-six minutes to live. Eddie crossed the boardwalk to the south end. Business was slow. The girl behind the taffy counter was leaning on her elbows, popping her gum.

  Once, Ruby Pier was the place to go in the summer. It had elephants and fireworks and marathon dance contests. But people didn’t go to ocean piers much anymore; they went to theme parks where you paid $75 a ticket and had yo
ur photo taken with a giant furry character.

  Eddie limped past the bumper cars and fixed his eyes on a group of teenagers leaning over the railing. Great, he told himself. Just what I need.

  “Off,” Eddie said, tapping the railing with his cane. C’mon. It s not safe.

  Whrrrssssh, A wave broke on the beach. Eddie coughed up something he did not want to see. He spat it away.

  Whrrssssssh. He used to think a lot about Marguerite. Not so much now. She was like a wound beneath an old bandage, and he had grown more used to the bandage.

  Whrrssssssh.

  What was shingles?

  Whrrsssssh.

  Sixteen minutes to live.

  No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.

  The end of Eddie’s story was touched by another seemingly innocent story, months earlier—a cloudy night when a young man arrived at Ruby Pier with three of his friends.

  The young man, whose name was Nicky, had just begun driving and was still not comfortable carrying a key chain. So he removed the single car key and put it in his jacket pocket, then tied the jacket around his waist.

  For the next few hours, he and his friends rode all the fastest rides: the Flying Falcon, the Splashdown, Freddy’s Free Fall, the Ghoster Coaster.

  “Hands in the air!” one of them yelled.

  They threw their hands in the air.

  Later, when it was dark, they returned to the car lot, exhausted and laughing, drinking beer from brown paper bags. Nicky reached into his jacket pocket. He fished around. He cursed.

  The key was gone.

  Fourteen minutes until his death. Eddie wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Out on the ocean, diamonds of sunlight danced on the water, and Eddie stared at their nimble movement. He had not been right on his feet since the war.

  But back at the Stardust Band Shell with Marguerite—there Eddie had still been graceful. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to summon the song that brought them together, the one Judy Garland sang in that movie. It mixed in his head now with the cacophony of the crashing waves and children screaming on the rides.

  “You made me love you—“

  Whsssshhhh.

  “—do it, I didn’t want to do i—“

  Spllllldddaashhhhhhh.

  “—me love you—“

  Eeeeeeee!

  “—time you knew it, and all the—“

  Chhhhewisshhhh.

  “—knew it …”

  Eddie felt her hands on his shoulders. He squeezed his eyes tightly, to bring the memory closer.

  Twelve minutes to live.

  “ ‘Scuse me.”

  A young girl, maybe eight years old, stood before him, blocking his sunlight. She had blonde curls and wore flip-flops and denim cutoff shorts and a lime green T-shirt with a cartoon duck on the front. Amy, he thought her name was. Amy or Annie. She’d been here a lot this summer, although Eddie never saw a mother or father.

  “ ‘Scuuuse me,” she said again. “Eddie Maint’nance?”

  Eddie sighed. “Just Eddie,” he said.

  “Eddie?”

  “Um hmm?”

  “Can you make me …”

  She put her hands together as if praying.

  “C’mon, kiddo. I don’t have all day.”

  “Can you make me an animal? Can you?”

  Eddie looked up, as if he had to think about it. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out three yellow pipe cleaners, which he carried for just this purpose.

  “Yesssss!” the little girl said, slapping her hands.

  Eddie began twisting the pipe cleaners.

  “Where’s your parents?”

  “Riding the rides.”

  “Without you?”

  The girl shrugged. “My mom’s with her boyfriend.”

  Eddie looked up. Oh.

  He bent the pipe cleaners into several small loops, then twisted the loops around one another. His hands shook now, so it took longer than it used to, but soon the pipe cleaners resembled a head, ears, body, and tail.

  “A rabbit?” the little girl said.

  Eddie winked.

  “Thaaaank you!”

  She spun away, lost in that place where kids don’t even know their feet are moving. Eddie wiped his brow again, then closed his eyes, slumped into the beach chair, and tried to get the old song back into his head.

  A seagull squawked as it flew overhead.

  How do people choose their final words? Do they realize their gravity? Are they fated to be wise?

  By his 83rd birthday, Eddie had lost nearly everyone he’d cared about. Some had died young, and some had been given a chance to grow old before a disease or an accident took them away. At their funerals, Eddie listened as mourners recalled their final conversations. “It’s as if he knew he was going to die…” some would say.

  Eddie never believed that. As far as he could tell, when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.

  For the record, Eddie’s final words would be “Get back!”

  Here are the sounds of Eddie’s last minutes on earth. Waves crashing. The distant thump of rock music. The whirring engine of a small biplane, dragging an ad from its tail. And this.

  “OH MY GOD! LOOK!”

  Eddie felt his eyes dart beneath his lids. Over the years, he had come to know every noise at Ruby Pier and could sleep through them all like a lullaby.

  This voice was not in the lullaby.

  “OH MY GOD! LOOK!”

  Eddie bolted upright. A woman with fat, dimpled arms was holding a shopping bag and pointing and screaming. A small crowd gathered around her, their eyes to the skies.

  Eddie saw it immediately. Atop Freddy’s Free Fall, the new “tower drop” attraction, one of the carts was tilted at an angle, as if trying to dump its cargo. Four passengers, two men, two women, held only by a safety bar, were grabbing frantically at anything they could.

  “OH MY GOD!” the fat woman yelled. “THOSE PEOPLE! THEY’RE GONNA FALL!”

  A voice squawked from the radio on Eddie’s belt. “Eddie! Eddie!”

  He pressed the button. “I see it! Get security!”

  People ran up from the beach, pointing as if they had practiced this drill. Look! Up in the sky! An amusement ride turned evil! Eddie grabbed his cane and clomped to safety fence around the platform base, his wad of keys jangling against his hip. His heart was racing.

  Freddy’s Free Fall was supposed to drop two carts in a stomach-churning descent, only to be halted at the last instant by a gush of hydraulic air. How did one cart come loose like that? It was tilted just a few feet below the upper platform, as if it had started downward then changed its mind.

  Eddie reached the gate and had to catch his breath. Dominguez came running and nearly banged into him.

  “Listen to me!” Eddie said, grabbing Dominguez by the shoulders. His grip was so tight, Dominguez made a pained face. “Listen to me! Who’s up there?”

  “Willie.”

  “OK. He must’ve hit the emergency stop. That’s why the cart is hanging. Get up the ladder and tell Willie to manually release the safety restraint so those people can get out. OK? It’s on the back of the cart, so you’re gonna have to hold him while he leans out there. OK? Then … then, the two of ya’s—the two of ya’s now, not one, you got it?—the two of ya’s get them out! One holds the other! Got it!? … Got it?”

  Dominguez nodded quickly.

  “Then send that damn cart down so we can figure out what happened!”

  Eddie’s head was pounding. Although his park had been free of any major accidents, he knew the horror stories of his business. Once, in Brighton, a bolt unfastened on a gondola ride and two people fell to their death. Another time, in Wonderland Park, a man had tried to walk across a roller coaster track; he fell through and got stuck beneath his armpit
s. He was wedged in, screaming, and the cars came racing toward him and … well, that was the worst.

  Eddie pushed that from his mind. There were people all around him now, hands over their mouths, watching Dominguez climb the ladder. Eddie tried to remember the insides of Freddy’s Free Fall. Engine. Cylinders. Hydraulics. Seals. Cables. How does a cart come loose? He followed the ride visually, from the four frightened people at the top, down the towering shaft, and into the base. Engine. Cylinders. Hydraulics. Seals. Cables…

  Dominguez reached the upper platform. He did as Eddie told him, holding Willie as Willie leaned toward the back of the cart to release the restraint. One of the female riders lunged for Willie and nearly pulled him off the platform. The crowd gasped.

  “Wait …” Eddie said to himself.

  Willie tried again. This time he popped the safety release.

  “Cable …” Eddie mumbled.

  The bar lifted and the crowd went “Ahhhhh.” The riders were quickly pulled to the platform.

  “The cable is unraveling…”

  And Eddie was right. Inside the base of Freddy’s Free Fall, hidden from view, the cable that lifted Cart No. 2 had, for the last few months, been scraping across a locked pulley. Because it was locked, the pulley had gradually ripped the cable’s steel wires—as if husking an ear of corn—until they were nearly severed. No one noticed. How could they notice? Only someone who had crawled inside the mechanism would have seen the unlikely cause of the problem.

  The pulley was wedged by a small object that must have fallen through the opening at a most precise moment.

  A car key.

  “Don’t release the cart!” Eddie yelled. He waved his arms. “HEY! HEEEEY! IT’S THE CABLE! DON’T RELEASE THE CART! IT’LL SNAP!”

  The crowd drowned him out. It cheered wildly as Willie and Dominguez unloaded the final rider. All four were safe. They hugged atop the platform.