The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

by Mitch Albom

They moved in together a month later, and their routines intertwined, like paint colors fading into each other. They shared breakfast, shared toothpaste, shared a cold, shared a mailing address. Autumn came and winter came and spring came and melted into summer. One bright morning, before leaving for work, Paulo pulled the elastic out of Annie’s hair and she shook free her wavy locks. “Better?” she said, and he said, “Better,” and they could have been talking about everything. Their marriage was a formality after that. But Paulo had a showman’s heart. He waited until one night, when he had things ready, and he led Annie to the roof of their building, which was lit by small torches and serenaded by classical music from a large white speaker. He pulled a sheet off a large lumpy shape to reveal an unusual sculpture: two giant papier-mâché frogs. He had made them to mark the day they met in the schoolyard. One frog wore a necktie and was leaping over the other. Attached to the necktie was a note. Annie read it. “One small step for frog, one giant leap for the two of us?” She burst out laughing. As she turned to Paulo, he already had a ring box open, and Annie didn’t even wait to hear the question. “Yes,” she gushed. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

And I realized, if you truly love someone, you’ll find a way back.”

“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.” He took her left hand. “But you do, right?”

“This is the heart we’re born with, Annie. It’s small and empty because it’s been through nothing.” He put it in her hand. “And this . . .” He took the four other pipe cleaners and twisted them to create a larger, complicated version, with lines crisscrossing the insides. “This is the heart we die with. After the people we love. After all our losses. It’s bigger, you see?” “But it’s broken,” Annie said. “Yes.” “That’s what ruins it.” Paulo pushed the heart to Annie’s chest. “No. That’s what makes it whole.”

“You have to go now.” “I want to be with you—” “I’ll be right here. But for now, you have to live.” “Live?” “You were saved from dying once, Annie. You owe the world some saving in return. It’s why you became a nurse. And why you need to go back. To save someone else.”

“See you in a little bit,” Paulo whispered.

“You’re OK now, Annie. You’re gonna be OK.”

For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel scared at all.

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

the secrets she had learned on her visit, how one life touches another and that life touches the next.

that all endings are also beginnings, we just don’t know it at the time.

And for the rest of her days, the child would be comforted knowing whatever her fears or losses, heaven held the answers to all her earthly questions, beginning with five people who were waiting for her, as they wait for us all, under the eyes...