The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

The Next Person You Meet in Heaven is the second book in a two-part series and follows The Five People You Meet in Heaven. The series’ first book focuses on Eddie, a maintenance worker at Ruby Pier amusement park, who dies saving a young girl from a falling ride. Eddie felt his life lacked purpose and meaning until he reached heaven and met five people whose lives were impacted by his own. These people included Eddie’s wife, a girl in the Philippines that Eddie unknowingly killed, his army captain, the woman named Ruby whom the pier was named after, and a man with blue skin. Like Annie, Eddie meets a mixture of people he expected (his wife, his army captain) and people he did not even know he affected, like the man with blue skin. Each was connected to Eddie either directly or indirectly, and by the time Eddie was done meeting them all, he possessed an entirely new outlook of his time on Earth.

When Eddie meets Annie, he tells her about both his life and his early experiences in the afterlife. He notes deep Interwoven Human Connections between all people, past and present: “You meet five people, then you’re one of five for someone else. That’s how heaven connects everybody” (181). Eddie acts as Annie’s mentor, tying this book to the previous one and showing the growth that Eddie has experienced after his own journey. Eddie’s role in the second novel is also to show Annie what happened to her and himself on the day of the Ruby Pier accident, which Annie does not fully know about until they meet. Annie feels a tremendous guilt upon witnessing the event, but Eddie assures her that her decision to hide underneath the ride was not the mistake she thought it was. Instead, it gave him an opportunity to instill purpose into his own life, and beyond that, to resolve the misdeeds of his time in the Philippines that resulted in Tala’s death. In teaching Annie this, he teaches her The Purpose of People, Suffering, and Life, and that “there’s no such thing as a nobody. And there are no mistakes” (182). Both Annie and Eddie felt a lack of meaning in their lives, and Eddie is therefore the best person to help Annie realize that even her pain and suffering have had a meaningful impact on the world around her.

The greatest difference between the stories of Eddie and Annie and the people they each meet in heaven is the fact that Annie is sent back to the world of the living. Eddie, as an older man who had many regrets, felt a sense of obligation to give up his remaining time for Annie. There was no chance of him returning from the accident that crushed his body. Annie, on the other hand, is still young when she dies, with many years left to serve others as a nurse and to become a mother to her future daughter, Giovanna. Both of their stories are a testament to the idea that humanity is an enormous, interconnected web of meaningful interactions, and of coming to terms with Death as a Part of the Life Cycle.