They'll be waiting

By: Nigel Alston | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: February 26, 2011

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

— Author Unknown

"That's a good book," I said to the woman sitting outside Starbucks recently. She was reading "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom. I like that book and remember a conversation I had with my wife after reading it years ago.

"What five people do you think you will meet when you get to heaven?" I asked her over dinner one evening. Without hesitation, the first name out of her mouth was Jesse Lee Littlejohn, her mother. I couldn't agree more. I'm looking forward to seeing her, too. Her list also included her sister Frances, a friend from college, a cousin and her third-grade teacher.

Albom also wrote the best-seller "Tuesdays with Morrie," which chronicled the slow illness and death of his college professor and mentor, Morrie Schwartz. I enjoyed reading that book, too, as well as his last book, "Have A Little Faith."

"Who might I meet?" I wondered, thinking about loved ones, friends and people I have come in contact with who have departed this earthly life. Like my wife, my mother is at the top of my list, followed by my paternal grandparents and my mother-in-law.

As I get older and more family and friends move on, my list changes. Who is number five? I don't know, probably someone I would least expect.

"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" is a novel based on Albom's Uncle Eddie, who was a blue-collar worker his whole life. According to Albom, "he felt that his life was insignificant." Eddie is also the name of the main character in the book, an 83-year-old amusement-park maintenance man. An account of his last 90 minutes on Earth is described in the first chapter, leading up to an accident that kills him.

He wakes up in heaven and all the pieces of his life come together after conversations with the people he might have expected to see and a few he was surprised to see. One of the lessons he learns is that he is now one of five people responsible for sharing with another person upon his or her arrival in heaven.

An incident in Albom's Uncle Eddie's life provided the spark for the book. He remembers his uncle telling the story of being rushed to the hospital for open-heart surgery. According to Albom, "it was touch and go." His uncle "remembered waking up and rising and seeing all of his dead relatives sitting on the edge of his bed."

That incident planted a thought with Albom that there was something else after death. His response to people who ask what he thinks will happen after death reflects his uncle's influence: "Well, I know there are people waiting for you because my uncle told me so."

"We're all connected," he said. "Everybody affects everybody. We're all part of this big life force." There is a ripple effect from touching a person that impacts the life of someone else, who influences yet another. We sometimes unknowingly plant seeds that we may not see grow to maturity.

Here is a great line from the first person Eddie talks to when he arrives in heaven, the Blue Man: "You could no more separate one human being from another than you could separate a breeze from the wind."

We are interconnected.

We also want answers to the unexplainable, like "Why me?

"Why did he die so young?

"Why did my loved one get sick?

"We often die without these questions answered," Albom says. The book offers you something to think about: What if we get our questions answered in heaven from those people waiting for us to arrive? Finally, the puzzle is complete.

I loved the book and what it suggests: that it isn't over after death. It's just another beginning.

Nigel Alston lives in Winston-Salem. He can be reached at nalston1@triad.rr.com.