PDF Summary:The Five People You Meet In Heaven, by Mitch Albom

...

Eddie’s daydream of Marguerite is interrupted by a young girl with blonde curls. Eddie has seen her around the park many times before, but can’t remember her name. Annie? Amy? She asks him to make her an animal out of the pipe cleaners he is known to carry in his front pocket. He twists up a small, yellow bunny for her, and she dances away, smiling.

All of a sudden, Eddie hears screams and immediately knows something is wrong. Looking up, he sees the cart of the Freddy’s Free Fall ride dangling at a dangerous angle. The passengers are terrified. He calls to Dom and the rest of the park maintenance and security teams. He gives everyone directions of how to handle the situation. He tells them to evacuate the passengers from the ride, then send the broken cart down to be examined.

Eddie could never have known this, but a few months earlier, a young man lost his car key at Ruby Pier. He had been keeping it in his jacket pocket while he rode the rides. As it turns out, the key had fallen and become lodged in Freddy’s Free Fall and had been slowly wearing away at the cable. There was no way to see that this was happening. Every person’s story overlaps with someone else’s....

...

Looking towards a large theater, Eddie realizes it’s the voice of a barker announcing a freak show. As a kid, Eddie always felt bad for the cast of the freak shows and how they were forced to sit behind bars while people pointed at them. For some reason, he still walks inside.

In the dark hall, he sees a man sitting alone. The man’s skin is blue. Eddie has seen this man before.

The Blue Man says, “Hello, Edward... I have been waiting for you.”

...

The shame turned Joseph into a very nervous young man. He went to a chemist to try and find something to calm him. Joseph began taking a lot of silver nitrate, not knowing it was a poison that would turn his skin a strange shade of blue. Eventually, he was fired from his job and outcast because of his skin condition.

Joseph had no choice but to join a traveling carnival as the Blue Man in a sideshow act. Eventually, he was given the job in the freak show at Ruby Pier. While at Ruby Pier, he found stability. He was able to give up the traveling lifestyle. He made friends to play cards with. Some days, he was even able to walk the beach without being stared at.

The Blue Man explains to Eddie that Ruby Pier amusement park is not Eddie’s heaven. It’s Joseph’s heaven.

Every story has different angles. Like the story of Eddie’s seventh birthday. To Eddie, the story had a happy ending. He spent the rest of his birthday in the Ruby Pier arcade, playing with his brother. For the Blue Man, the story ended very differently.

On the day of Eddie’s birthday, the Blue Man had been practicing his driving in a friend’s Ford Model A. All of a sudden, he saw a baseball bouncing...

...

The Captain was older than the other men in Eddie’s troop. He was relatively well-liked because he promised never to leave a man behind. Now under the Captain’s gaze, Eddie has to resist asking if he had killed him, too.

The Captain asks Eddie if he kept in touch with the guys they fought with in the war. Eddie admits that although they always promised to come see Ruby Pier, none of them ever did. The next question the Captain asks Eddie is if he can still juggle.

Eddie’s Memories of War

During the war, Eddie had to learn many lessons: how to march, how to pray quickly, how to spit, how to take a prisoner. But, he never learned how to be a prisoner himself. That is, until one night when he felt a cold rifle on the back of his neck.

Eddie was taken with the Captain and three other men: Smitty, Morton, and Rabozzo. They were marched to a bamboo hut and forced to stay there for months, sleeping on the ground and nearly starving. Each day they were tormented by their guards, whom they called Crazy One, Crazy Two, Crazy Three, and Crazy Four.

Eddie and the others were forced to mine coal under terrible conditions. Eventually, Rabozzo fell ill. One day, in the mine, he...

...

As Eddie grew older, his father would lash out at him and Joe whenever he was frustrated or drunk. Yelling at his mother to stay out of it, Eddie’s dad would throw things or hit them with a belt. This was the damage of violence.

Through it all, Eddie continued to adore his father and long for his approval. Sometimes, he even earned it. When his father asked him to fix something, Eddie would do so, come back, and say “it’s fixed.” This earned him a small smile. When he would win in a fight, his father would give him the slightest nod. Eddie would just nod back. In this way, Eddie learned that his father wanted everything to be kept inside, denying all words of affection.

After the war, the silence took over completely. It happened one night after Eddie had moved home from the hospital. Since being back, Eddie had been depressed—barely able to talk to anyone or even to leave the house. His father didn’t approve. He considered sadness a sign of weakness. That night, Eddie’s father began yelling at him, as he used to. He screamed at Eddie to get up and get a job. But when his father raised his fist to hit him, Eddie grabbed his arm and stopped him for the first...

...

Marguerite comes to the door of the shop wearing her Ruby Pier uniform. Seeing her in the red vest and beret makes Eddie embarrassed in front of Joe. But Marguerite smiles and asks Eddie to step outside with her. When he does, there is a group of children waiting to shout happy birthday to him.

Eddie is touched. He loves seeing Marguerite around children. He knows it’s a shame that she can’t bear any of her own. She’s been asking him to consider adoption, but he feels they’re too old.

Marguerite and the kids light 38 candles on top of the messy cake. A child pokes Eddie and tells him to blow them all out and once. He looks at his wife and says “I will.” Marguerite takes a Polaroid photo of the moment.

Eddie stares at Marguerite and cannot believe that it’s really her. She holds his hand and assures Eddie that it is really her, and he cries on her shoulder.

Every man and woman has a certain kind of love, one of love’s many forms. Eddie’s love for Marguerite was grateful and deep, but also quiet. After he lost her, the rest of his days were dull. Now, Eddie is standing in front of his wife again. She is as young and beautiful as on their wedding...

...

Eddie’s Final Lesson

The little girl standing before Eddie has beautiful, dark skin and arresting black eyes. She waves her hands excitedly to Eddie. Her name is Tala. He repeats, “Tala.” Then she begins to name things in her own language and Eddie imitates each word.

Eddie sees the other children in the water around them. They are bathing with stones. Tala says that is how their mothers used to wash them. Then Tala notices pipe cleaners in Eddie’s shirt. He twists up a little dog for her. He asks her if she likes the toy, but she answers “You burn me.”

Tala tells Eddie that she used to have to hide from soldiers. Eddie is horrified because he knows that she was the shadow he saw in the flames the day of his escape from captivity. Looking into Tala’s eyes, he is heartbroken. He begins to sob and wail, asking for forgiveness for the things he’s done. Eddie continues to weep while Tala plays with her pipe cleaner dog.

Tala hands Eddie a stone and asks him to wash her. She removes her shirt and Eddie is startled to see that her skin is burned and scarred. As he washes her with the stone, the scars begin to fall away.

Tala uses her fingers to tell Eddie that she is his...

...

One of the people waiting in line to explain to the girl with curls why she lived is an old man named Eddie who she’ll meet in the Stardust Band Shell. Someday, he’ll share with her what he’s learned: that every person’s story affects the next person’s story. In fact, all the stories are one.