Page 62 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
She choked up.
“At the top of the world.”
“And here we are,” Paulo said.
He waved his hand and a magnificent wash of colors swept the sky beneath their feet. Annie stared at her husband, who looked the way he’d looked at their wedding, but so at peace, his eyes creaseless, his lips without a single line. There was no one she wanted to see more. There was no one she wanted to see less.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why are you here?”
“The winds blew,” he said.
The Fifth Lesson
Loss is as old as life itself. But for all our evolution, we are yet to accept it.
Annie, realizing she had not saved Paulo’s life, felt consumed by her losses now. From the father who left early, to the hand damaged by the accident, to the home she was forced to leave, to the friends she left behind, to her mother’s death, to her lost child, to her wedding night, to this, her husband, here in front of her. Her final loss.
She had failed again.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
“A little while.”
“Will you meet five people?”
“I already have.”
“I don’t understand. Did I die after you?”
“Time is different here, Annie. A few seconds on earthcould be a century in heaven. It’s wild. Better than all my nerdy space books.”
He smiled, and Annie felt the corners of her own mouth rising. But then she remembered where they were.
“No,” she insisted. “It’s not fair. We had one night being married.”
“One night can change a lot.”
“It’s not enough!” She looked at him like a pleading child. “I don’t understand, Paulo. Why couldn’t we just be happy? Why was everything good taken away from me?”
Paulo gazed at the black firmament as if checking something, even though there was nothing there.
“Remember that last day in high school?” he said. “I actually ran after you. I saw you in the park. You were crying on a bench, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you. I knew that I’d let you down.
“We moved the next day, and for fifteen years, that gnawed at me. As young as we were, I felt I’d lost someone important, someone precious. I came home to America hoping one day to see you again. Then, out of the blue, there you were, at the hospital. And I realized, if you truly love someone, you’ll find a way back.”
Annie frowned. “And then you lose them again.”
“You lose something every day you live, Annie. Sometimes it’s as tiny as the breath you just expelled, sometimes it’s so big you think you won’t survive it.”
He took her left hand. “But you do, right?”
Annie felt an arterial burst of love. Her husband was here. At least she could be with him. And yet...
“I wanted to save you,” she whispered.
“You gave me a lung.”
“But you stilldied.”
