Eddie was the top maintenance man at a seaside theme park at the Ruby Pier and on his 83rd birthday gave his life trying to save a little girl's life. Now, he's in heaven meeting the first of five people who will explain his life to him. The first person is The Blue Man, a sideshow freak at the Ruby Pier. He drank too much silver nitrate to cure his nerves and it turned his skin blue so he joined the show to make a living. Eddie's ball ran out into the road just as he was learning to drive a car and he slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting him, but the shock to his heart caused him to have a heart attack and die. Here he learns that life is short.
Then he meets with his old Army Captain from World War II when he was captured in the Philippines. They were starved and tortured, but one night they overtook their captors and decided to burn down the buildings and village they were being held in. Eddie could have sworn he saw someone in one of the buildings and ran into it to save whoever it was inside, but it was just a shadow. His fellow soldier tried to stop him but was unsuccessful and Eddie was getting burned so his Captain shot him in the knee to bring him down so they could get him out of there. Losing his knee meant losing his dreams on the life of becoming an engineer because for him the War had really become real for him at that moment.
Eddie will go on to meet the Ruby of Ruby Pier and learn about forgiveness and letting go and then meet his wife. The fifth person will be a complete surprise and someone you won't be expecting, which makes the book worth reading. Eddie is a man who does not think much of his life and while this book shows the good and the bad, Eddie is more than just a maintenance man for a theme park. This book shows how we are all special in our own way and that there are five people waiting in heaven to explain to us why. I was expecting this book to be a real saccharine read that overdid the waterworks, but I was wrong. It wasn't sugary at all but rather realistic in the parts that deal with life on earth and logical with the ones that deal with the afterlife. I can't promise, though, that it won't keep away the waterworks as my book club read this book and some of them cried during parts of it, but it doesn't manipulate you into crying. I have to admit this is a very good book and I give it four out of five stars.
That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 48)
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 49)
No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 50)
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others, crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces beyond repair.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p 104)
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother’s approval, a father’s nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p 126)
People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find is a certain love.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p 155)
Life has to end. Love doesn’t.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet In Heaven p173)
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.
-Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven p 141)
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