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As I was reading The Five People You Meet in
Heaven, I didn’t expect the ending to make me cry. But, here I am, rolling toilet
paper (since I am out of Kleenexes) off a roll, sniffling and blowing my
nose.
Eddie is the maintenance man at the Ruby Pier Amusement Park. He’s
spent nearly his whole life making sure the park rides are safe for children and adults.
Yet, he feels he’s accomplished nothing with his life. In fact, his life is painfully
ordinary and I, as the reader, can relate all too well. Each day to Eddie is the same old
same old until one day he wakes up and can’t tell Tuesday from Thursday. Ugh! I think
this happened to me last week!
On the last day of his life, he’s killed
by a falling cart while trying to save a little girl from being crushed beneath it. When
he awakens from death, he meets with five people whose lives he touched, no matter how
fleeting, on earth. This is supposed to help him make sense of his life. It does, but
what he learns is painful, even though you knew it had to happen that way in order for
Eddie’s life to make sense.
Throughout the book I kept hoping my heaven
wouldn’t be like that, because Eddie had to relive some of the most painful moments of
his life, and I didn’t always feel the lessons learned were worth
it.
Initially, I didn’t care for Mr. Albom’s version of heaven. His is
facing people from your life who in some way sacrificed something for you, bringing about
feelings of guilt. Eddie didn’t understand, and neither did I – at
first.
My version of heaven is sunshine, blue skies, white cotton clothes,
tables and tables laden with food, mostly fruit, especially grapes, and walking in a
beautiful garden of roses, daisies, and lilacs with those I loved the most on earth.
It’s a place where I’m happy, well fed, and loved. But this is my version of heaven,
not necessarily the version of the person sitting next to me.
What you
learn in the end will surprise you as much as it does Eddie, and you’ll suddenly
understand that Eddie’s life was more than ordinary, it was extraordinary. Ah shoot,
I’m crying again! The people he met with, and the things he relived with them, and the
lessons he took away with him suddenly make more sense than ever. I wouldn’t mind this
short stop on my way to blue skies and grapes, after all.
The whole novel
is great, but the ending is what makes The Five People You Meet in Heaven an
amazing read, right up there with the classics.
