The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

by Mitch Albom

Annie Edson Taylor, who, in 1901, when she was sixty-three, climbed into a barrel and became the first person to go over Niagara Falls and survive.

She said “courage” like it was something rare and precious. Lorraine wanted that for her child. She wished she had more of it herself.

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

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.

But, like many her age, Annie’s thirst for independence overruled her need for guidance.

Neither had the strength to confront the emotions they shielded. They were polite.

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

“Love is strength,”

“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.”

“You were so sad,” Lorraine observed. “Of course.” “Then why did you shut me out for so long?”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” “I know you’re sorry. I’m asking you why?” “You know why.” Annie sighed. “You embarrassed me. You smothered me. Every social thing I wanted to do. Every chance to have fun. I felt like a prisoner in my own childhood.

“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?” Annie nodded.

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.”

“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. “By the time I reached the hospital, they had already started operating. I had to ask what they were doing. Me. Your mother. Asking like an outsider. I cried so hard. Not just for your pain, Annie, but for my own humiliation. “All those rules? All the limits and curfews I would put on you? It was all because of that day. I never wanted to make another mistake.” “It just made me hate you,” Annie said, softly. “No more than I hated myself. I didn’t protect you. I left you alone. After that, I could never think of myself as a good mother again. “I was so ashamed. It made me hard on you, when I was trying to be hard on me.

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

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

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

That’s what I’m here for.

“And you’ve been waiting for me all this time?” “What’s time between a mother and her daughter? Never too much, never enough.”

“Mom?” “Yes?” “We fought a lot.” “I know.” She took Annie’s left hand and guided it into the water. “But is that all you remember?”

“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.” Annie began to cry again, tears of release, blessed release, the expulsion of secrets bottled up for years. She realized the sacrifices Lorraine had made before and after that day at Ruby Pier, ending her marriage, giving up her home, forsaking her friends, her history, her desires, making Annie her only priority. She thought about her mother’s small funeral, and how much of Lorraine’s life had been surrendered to protect Annie’s. “Yes, yes, I forgive you, Mom. Of course I forgive you. I didn’t know. I love you.” Lorraine placed her hands together. “Grace?” “Grace.” “That,” Lorraine said, smiling, “is what I was here to teach you.”

“You need to make your peace.”

“Courage.”

What was the point of heaven and its march of five people if each of them abandoned you just when solace was within reach? “You need to make your peace,” her mother had said. Why? With whom? Annie just wanted things to stop. She felt drained, weary, like at the end of a long, hard day.

“Patients trust you,” she says. “That’s a big deal.”

“People do all kinds of things because of stuff they don’t remember,”

“When you’re ready to remember, you’ll remember.”

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.

“Is your wife here?” Annie asked. “She’s not part of your journey.” “But you get to be with her? In your heaven?” Eddie smiled. “It wouldn’t be my heaven without her.”

“I wish I knew how to pray better,” she whispers. “I wish I knew what to ask for you.”

“I was afraid when I was captured. Scared outta my mind. When I got free, I let it out. We all did. We attacked. We destroyed. We burned this place to the ground. I thought I was justified. Maybe even brave. But I was doing something awful, something I never knew.”

“Mistakes,” Eddie declared. “That’s what I’m here to teach you about. You felt like you kept making them? You feel like maybe you made one now?” Annie looked away. “I used to think the same thing,” Eddie continued. “I thought my whole life was a mistake. Things kept happening to me, lousy things, until I finally gave up trying.” He shrugged. “I never even knew the worst mistake I made.”

“You’ve been haunted by something most of your life, right? Something you can’t remember, but it makes you feel bad about yourself?” “How do you know that?” Annie asked, softly. “Because my whole life, I did, too. I felt out of place. Like I was trapped at Ruby Pier and wasn’t supposed to be there. Fixing rides? Who wants a lousy job like that? It had to be a mistake to ever take it, I thought. “Then I died. And Tala explained why I was there. To protect kids, the thing I didn’t do with her. She told me I was right where I was supposed to be.” He put his hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “And then she told me one more thing, something that took away my pain forever. My salvation, I guess, to use a fancy word.” “What did she say?” Eddie smiled. “That I died saving you.”

“On earth, we get the what of things. The why takes a little longer.”

“No,” Annie insisted. “There was no why! There was just me being where I shouldn’t have been. And people covering it up. Nobody told me. I couldn’t remember, and my mother kept it secret.” “She was protecting you.” “From what?” “From what you’re doing now—blaming yourself.”

She couldn’t look at Eddie. “You gave your life for me,” she whispered. “You sacrificed everything. And I couldn’t even face the truth.” Annie dropped to the ground, her knees smacking the mud. “I’m so sorry. If only I had run the other way. Then you wouldn’t have had to save me.” “You’re not getting it,” Eddie gently replied. “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.”

“You meet five people, then you’re one of five for someone else. That’s how heaven connects everybody.”

You only have peace when you make it with yourself. I had to learn that the hard way.”

“The truth is, I spent years thinking I was doing nothing ’cause I was a nobody. You spent years doing lots of things and thinking they were all mistakes.” He exhaled. “We were both wrong.”

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

“I worked here my whole life,” Eddie yelled from their midst. “Keeping rides safe meant keeping kids safe. And because they were safe, they grew up and had kids of their own. And their kids had kids, and their kids will have kids.” He motioned to the sea of young faces. “My heaven lets me see them all.”

As a child, Annie had been taught that when she died, the Lord would take her in and all would be comfort and peace. 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.

In time, as with the truest loves, their lives melded seamlessly, and they knew it would stay that way without ever saying a word.