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You might say that is too young to die. But what is too young for a life? As a child, Annie had been spared from death once, in another accident at a place called Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. Some said her survival was a miracle.
As Annie learns, we can be forgiven. There are reasons why we are here that perhaps we never really thought about. There are people we have come across perhaps for only a minute of time that we have affected in a most positive manner and just like Annie we need to forgive ourselves. While we might have done bad things, we also might have done really wonderful things as well. Then she focused in on Paulo’s grin, as wide as the horizon. There was nervous laughter as he struggled to get the ring on. When Annie held her finger up, everyone yelled, Congratulations!Eddie meets his former captain from the army, who reminds Eddie of their time together as prisoners of war in a forced labor camp in the Philippines. Their group burned the camp during their escape and Eddie, while running away, remembers seeing a shadow move in one of the huts. The Captain confesses that he shot Eddie in the leg to prevent Eddie from chasing the shadow into the fire. This saved Eddie's life despite leaving him with a lifelong severe limp. Eddie then learns how the Captain died: he stepped on a land mine that would have killed all the men had he not set it off. She encountered a grave and met Eddie, the maintenance worker who had saved her years ago. Annie touched his hand and saw his entire life, childhood through his death. Annie told him about her life and how the accident scarred her physically and emotionally. The landscape changed and they found themselves in the Philippines, where Eddie served during World War II. He was imprisoned, and after his escape, he set a village on fire, accidentally killing a girl. The girl, Tala, appeared, and told Annie that Eddie died saving her. Annie then witnessed her accident for the first time. She was overcome by emotion and realized the guilt she felt all her life stemmed from the accident. Eddie told Annie that saving her was his salvation, his atonement for killing Tala, and that she needed to forgive herself for her mistakes. Before parting, Eddie handed her Laurence, her child, and Annie was able to hold him and feel for a moment before he vanishes as well. Since that day in her childhood, Annie's life has been rough. Her mum was constantly off with boyfriends, and set Annie really strict rules on not leaving the house, and socializing in an effort to protect her. A pipe cleaner rabbit—like the one Paulo just gave her—had been in Annie’s hands the day of the fateful accident, a gift from the whiskered old man she was seeing now at her wedding.
The sequel of “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom which is “The Next Person You Meet In Heaven” is focusing on Annie’s story which Eddie saved from Freddy’s Free Fall accident. The prequel focuses on meeting Eddie’s people that are important in his life and learning from the lessons of life. In this sequel, Annie saw and met people that are important in her life and learning her life and her story. The accident that killed Eddie left an indelible mark on Annie. It took her left hand, which needed to be surgically reattached. Injured, scarred, and unable to remember why, Annie’s life is forever changed by a guilt-ravaged mother who whisks her away from the world she knew. Bullied by her peers and haunted by something she cannot recall, Annie struggles to find acceptance as she grows. When, as a young woman, she reconnects with Paulo, her childhood love, she believes she has finally found happiness. Eddie: The protagonist and main character around whom the story centers; at the start of the story, he is killed on his 83rd birthday. Annie regained consciousness but found herself in a swirl of blue colors and sounds. She had no body and when the blue faded away, she was in a train with a young boy, Sameer. Though she could not talk, Sameer could hear her thoughts. He told her he was the first person she would meet in heaven but he did not tell her anything about Paulo. He was supposed to teach her a lesson and he showed a younger version of him running alongside a speeding train, only to have his arm ripped off when he grabbed a railing. Sameer explained that his accident allowed doctors to work on new methods of replanting limbs. Inspired by his accident, Sameer grew up to become a doctor specializing in re-plantation. He showed her laying in the hospital bed as a young girl, revealing that it was he who operated on her hand. With the revelation, Annie's damaged hand appeared and Sameer reminded her that life is built on the foundations laid by who came before.Little things are most often neglected and unnoticed just like how we exhale air everyday. It is indeed a fact that we lose something everyday, as simple and as practical of this example but real loss for me is grief and suffering. It is the hardest struggle you needed to get through in life, you move on or live with it. After the accident that took Eddie’s life, Annie has visible scars but no memory of what happened. Not only does she have memory loss, she is haunted by what the truth may reveal. It consumes her. The characters are quite relatable. When things go horribly wrong, we tend to be unforgiving about ourselves. It tends to feel like everything is our fault and we could have done things so much better. As the novel opens, Annie is marrying Paulo. But when her wedding night ends in an unimaginable accident, Annie finds herself on her own heavenly journey - and an inevitable reunion with Eddie, one of the five people who will show her how her life mattered in ways she could not have fathomed. Fifteen years ago, the world fell in love with Eddie, a grizzled war veteran- turned-amusement park mechanic who died saving the life of a young girl named Annie. Eddie’s journey to heaven taught him that every life matters. Now, in this magical sequel, Mitch Albom reveals Annie’s story.
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