First Phone Call from Heaven

by Mitch Albom

believing that the words people do not speak are louder than the ones they do.

It’s better than we dreamed, Kath.

Our family is all together. Her. My parents.

You might think a person who brings proof of heaven would be embraced. But even in the presence of a miracle, the human heart will say, Why not me?

The living can’t speak to the dead! If they could, don’t you think I would? Wouldn’t I trade my next hundred breaths for one word from my wife? It’s not possible. There is no God who does such things.

“Fear is how you lose your life . . . a little bit at a time. . . . What we give to fear, we take away from . . . faith.”

“All who accept the Lord get in.”

There is life after this life.

“The End Is Not the End.”

Alexander Bell met the love of his life, Mabel, when she came to him as a deaf student. She was ten years his junior, but Bell fell for her hard, and over the years, her encouragement spurred him on in his work.

There are two stories for every life; the one you live, and the one others tell.

The blood report had come back from the hospital. It showed traces of alcohol in Sully’s system.

toxicology

There was a kid, he reminded me of . . .”

“When people don’t believe in something, they’re lost.”

He exhaled. “It means . . . ‘What is this?’”

Her fingers seemed to melt through his skin.

Jack stayed where he was. But he was no longer where he was.

Is there life after death?

Can we make a Studley?”

where’s Horace?”

Lance’s last-minute suggestion—the

“Eddie? Your ex-wife?”

Horace

Elliot Gray?

Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.

I beg your forgiveness.

But I’m afraid my son panicked. I found him alone in the tower’s control booth, yelling, “What did I do? What did I do?” I told him to lock the door and let me handle things as I moved quickly to erase all data—thinking, like an operative, that with no flight recordings, he could not be proven at fault.

For the first time in my life, I wept for my child.

bought an interest in his business, and discovered that the grieving of others gave me comfort. I listened to their stories. Listened to their regrets. Nearly all of them had a single desire—the same desire, I suppose, that led me to the airfield that day: to speak with their loved ones at least once more.

Instead, I end this as I began it, asking your forgiveness. Perhaps, soon, I will be able to seek the same from my son. Good-bye— Elliot Gray Sr., aka Horace Belfin

Sometimes you sit in a cell and don’t deserve it, Mr. Harding. Sometimes it’s the other way around.