The Stranger in the Lifeboat

by Mitch Albom

But out here, adrift, you realize how often we take our placement on this Earth for granted.

“The distance between death and life is not as great as you imagine.” “Really?” Yannis turned his way. “Then why don’t people come back to Earth after they die?” The stranger smiled. “Why would they want to?”

It has always been a mystery to me, Annabelle, how beauty and anguish can share the same moment.

I wonder if this is what dying is like, Annabelle. At first, you are so tightly connected to the world you cannot imagine letting go. In time, you surrender to a drifting phase. What comes next, I cannot say. Some would say that you meet the Lord.

We are taught as children that we come from God, that we were created in His image, but the things we do as we grow, the way we behave, what is godlike about that? And the terrible things that befall us? How does a supreme being permit them?

“Do you think we’re about to die, Jean Philippe?” “No, Benji. I think the Lord has come to save us.” “But look at him. He’s just . . . average.” Jean Philippe smiled. “What did you expect the Lord to look like? Don’t we always say, ‘If only we could see God, we would know he was real’? What if He has finally given us a chance to see Him? Is it still not enough?”

“Science,” the stranger said, looking at the sky. “Yes. With science, you have explained away the sun. You have explained away the stars I put in the firmament. You have explained away all the creatures, large and small, with which I populated the Earth. You have even explained my greatest creation.” “What’s that?” I asked. “You.” He ran his hand along the skin of the raft. “Science has traced your existence back to primitive life-forms, and to primitive forms before those. But it will never be able to answer the final question.” “Which is?” “Where did it all begin?” He smiled. “That answer can only be found in me.”

The power of misery is its long shadow. It darkens everything within view.

Maybe laughter after someone dies is the way we tell ourselves that they are still alive in some way. Or that we are.

“Worry is something you create.” “Why would we create worry?” “To fill a void.” “A void of what?” “Faith.”

“If you were really God,” I seethed, “you would have stopped him.” He looked to the sea and shook his head. “God starts things,” he said. “Man stops them.”

“When someone passes, Benjamin, people always ask, ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?’ What did we do to deserve their love, their joy, the sweet moments we shared? Didn’t you have such moments with Annabelle?”

“Beginnings and endings are earthly ideas. I go on. And because I go on, you go on with me. Feeling loss is part of why you are on Earth. Through it, you appreciate the brief gift of human existence, and you learn to cherish the world I created for you. But the human form is not permanent. It was never meant to be. That gift belongs to the soul.

“I know the tears you shed, Benjamin. When people leave this Earth, their loved ones always weep.” She smiled. “But I promise you, those who leave do not.”

“Despair has its own voice. It is a prayer unlike any other.”

“This world can be a trying place, Inspector. Sometimes you have to shed who you were to live who you are.”

In the end, there is the sea and the land and the news that happens between them. To spread that news, we tell each other stories. Sometimes the stories are about survival. And sometimes those stories, like the presence of the Lord, are hard to believe. Unless believing is what makes them true.