From the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie comes this long-awaited follow-up. Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It s a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie s five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his meaningless life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: Why was I here? A moving and profound contemporary fable, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is an important reminder of the interconnectedness of us all. The Five People You Meet in Heaven By Mitch Albom Random House Large Print Publishing Copyright ©2003 Mitch Albom All right reserved. ISBN: 0375432329 Chapter One The End This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end,with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a storywith an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don'tknow it at the time. The last hour of Eddie's life was spent, like most of the others, atRuby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. The park had theusual attractions, a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, roller coasters,bumper cars, a taffy stand, and an arcade where you could shootstreams of water into a clown's mouth. It also had a big new ridecalled Freddy's Free Fall, and this would be where Eddie would bekilled, in an accident that would make newspapers around the state. At the time of his death, Eddie was a squat, white-haired old man,with a short neck, a barrel chest, thick forearms, and a faded armytattoo on his right shoulder. His legs were thin and veined now, andhis left knee, wounded in the war, was ruined by arthritis. He useda cane to get around. His face was broad and craggy from the sun,with salty whiskers and a lower jaw that protruded slightly, makinghim look prouder than he felt. He kept a cigarette behind his leftear and a ring of keys hooked to his belt. He wore rubber-soledshoes. He wore an old linen cap. His pale brown uniform suggested aworkingman, and a workingman he was. Eddie's job was "maintaining" the rides, which really meant keepingthem safe. Every afternoon, he walked the park, checking on eachattraction, from the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Pipeline Plunge. He lookedfor broken boards, loose bolts, worn-out steel. Sometimes he wouldstop, his eyes glazing over, and people walking past thoughtsomething was wrong. But he was listening, that's all. After allthese years he could hear trouble, he said, in the spits andstutters and thrumming of the equipment. With 50 minutes left on earth, Eddie took his last walk along RubyPier. He passed an elderly couple. "Folks," he mumbled, touching his cap. They nodded politely. Customers knew Eddie. At least the regularones did. They saw him summer after summer, one of those faces youassociate with a place. His work shirt had a patch on the chest thatread Eddie above the word Maintenance, and sometimes they would say,"Hiya, Eddie Maintenance," although he never thought that was funny. Today, it so happened, was Eddie's birthday, his 83rd. A doctor,last week, had told him he had shingles. Shingles? Eddie didn't evenknow what they were. Once, he had been strong enough to lift acarousel horse in each arm. That was a long time ago. "Eddie!" ... "Take me, Eddie!" ... "Take me!" Forty minutes until his death. Eddie made his way to the front ofthe roller coaster line. He rode every attraction at least once aweek, to be certain the brakes and steering were solid. Today wascoaster day - the "Ghoster Coaster" they called this one - and thekids who knew Eddie yelled to get in the cart with him. Children liked Eddie. Not teenagers. Teenagers gave him headaches.Over the years, Eddie figured he'd seen every sort of do-nothing,snarl-at-you teenager there was. But children were different.Children looked at Eddie - who, with his protruding lower jaw,always seemed to be grinning, like a dolphin - and they trustedhim. They drew in like cold hands to a fire. They hugged his leg.They played with his keys. Eddie mostly grunted, never saying much.He figured it was because he didn't say much that they liked him. Now Eddie tapped two little boys with backward baseball caps. Theyraced to the cart and tumbled in. Eddie handed his cane to the rideattendant and slowly lowered himself between the two. "Here we go.... Here we go! ..." one boy squealed, as theother pulled Eddie's arm around his shoulder. Eddie lowered the lapbar and clack-clack-clack , up they went. A story went around about Eddie. When he was a boy, growing up bythis very same pier, he got