The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

by Mitch Albom

The tale of your life is written second by second, as shifting as the flip of a pencil to an eraser.

There are touches in your life that identify the person making contact, even if your eyes are closed.

Change causes wind. And the bigger the change, the stronger the wind blows. Life is much the same.

“Tell me something, Annie. Did the world begin with your birth?” “Of course not.” “Right. Not yours. Not mine. Yet we humans make so much of ‘our’ time on earth. We measure it, we compare it, we put it on our tombstones. “We forget that ‘our’ time is linked to others’ times. We come from one. We return to one. That’s how a connected universe makes sense.”

“People lament that if their loved ones had been born fifty years later, they might have survived what killed them. But perhaps what killed them is what led someone to find a cure.

“Remember this, Annie. When we build, we build on the shoulders of those who came before us. And when we fall apart, those who came before us help put us back together.”

Over the centuries, man has created countless depictions of the hereafter; few, if any, show the departed soul alone. Despite the ways we isolate ourselves on earth, in our final bliss, we are always with someone: the Lord, Jesus, saints, angels, loved ones. A solitary afterlife seems unimaginably grim.

“Have you ever considered how many living things there are on earth?” Cleo asked. “People. Animals. Birds. Fish. Trees. It makes you wonder how anyone could feel lonely. Yet humans do. It’s a shame.”

“We fear loneliness,

Annie, but loneliness itself does not exist. It has no form. It is merely a shadow that falls over us. And just as shadows die when light changes, that sad feeling can depart once we see the truth.” “What’s the truth?” Annie asked. “That the end of loneliness is when someo...

“This is my heaven,” Cleo said. “Watching people come home?” Annie asked. “Feeling the joy when they do. Souls reuniting. It’s something divine.” “But it happens every day.” Cleo tilted her head. “Don’t divine things happen every day?”

“No act done for someone else is ever wasted.”

Children begin by needing their parents. Over time, they reject them. Eventually, they become them.

This is the disarming power of children: their need makes you forget your own.

First loves often remain in the heart, like plants that cannot grow in sunlight.

ALL CHILDREN KEEP SECRETS. All parents do the same. We mold the version we want others to believe, boosting the disguise and tucking away the truth. It is how we can be loved by our closest family members and still, at times, elude them.

But the things we have done are never far behind us. And like a shadow, they go where we do.

But just because you have silenced a memory does not mean you are free of it.

Perhaps if there had been more time, the wall between them would have crumbled. But the world does not cater to our timing.

“You always wonder about your funeral. How big? Who’ll show up? In the end it’s meaningless. You realize, once you die, that a funeral is for everyone else, not you.”

“Did you ever think about getting a moment back?” Lorraine asked, as she watched alongside her daughter. “A moment where you can’t believe how unimportant what you were doing was, and how critical the thing you missed would be?”

“was foolish. Love is not revenge. It can’t be thrown like a rock. And you can’t create it to fix your problems. Forcing love is like picking a flower then insisting that it grow.”

She looked directly at Annie. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I was so desperate to find someone new to love me, I forgot I already had the best person. You.”

“Just because you see things straight doesn’t mean you see them in time.”

“That was the lowest moment of my life,” her mother said. “When my daughter most needed me, I was with a man I didn’t even care about.

We are blinded by our regrets, Annie. We don’t realize who else we punish while we’re punishing ourselves.”

Once the baby has a name, he is real. And once he is real, he is really gone.

“Secrets. We think by keeping them, we’re controlling things, but all the while, they’re controlling us.”

“Mom. Did Paulo live? Just tell me. Please. If anyone can, you can, right?” Lorraine touched her cheek. “It’s not for me to know.”

She was broken open. But broken open is still open.

“What’s time between a mother and her daughter? Never too much, never enough.”

“Because we embrace our scars more than our healing,” Lorraine said. “We can recall the exact day we got hurt, but who remembers the day the wound was gone?

“Can you break that last secret? Can you say the real reason for your resentment since Ruby Pier?” Annie choked up. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Because you weren’t there to save me.” Lorraine closed her eyes. “That’s right. Can you forgive me for that?” “Mom.” “Yes?” “You don’t need to hear me say it.” “No, I don’t,” Lorraine said, softly. “But you do.”

“Yes, yes, I forgive you, Mom. Of course I forgive you. I didn’t know. I love you.”

When people suffer a near-death experience, they often say, “My whole life flashed before my eyes.” Scientists have even studied this phenomenon, aware that certain brain cortices can suffer hypoxia and blood loss, which, during a great trauma, might trigger a release of memories. But science only knows what it knows. And because it lacks an understanding of the next world, it cannot explain that the flash before your eyes is actually a peek behind the curtain of heaven, where your life and the lives of all you’ve touched are on the same plane, so that seeing one memory is the same as seeing them all.

“I needed to save you. It let me make up for the life I took. “That’s how salvation works. The wrongs we do open doors to do right.”

“There’s no such thing as a nobody. And there are no mistakes.”

When Annie looked down, she saw her arms were empty, and she howled in anguish, feeling utterly full and utterly vacant, which is what having and losing a child is like.

Perhaps that was meant for those with completed missions. If you didn’t finish your story on earth, how could heaven do it for you?

Love comes when you least expect it. Love comes when you most need it. Love comes when you are ready to receive it or can no longer deny it.

And while she didn’t know it then, she was learning another truth about love: it comes when it comes. Simple as that.

Loss is as old as life itself. But for all our evolution, we are yet to accept it.

And I realized, if you truly love someone, you’ll find a way back.” Annie frowned. “And then you lose them again.” “You lose something every day you live, Annie. Sometimes it’s as tiny as the breath you just expelled, sometimes it’s so big you think you won’t survive it.”

But there are so many times our lives are altered invisibly. The flip of a pencil, from written to erased.