One day, at Ruby Pier Amusement Park, a man named Eddie dies. Like most endings, Eddie’s death is also a beginning, even though he doesn’t know it. It is Eddie’s 83rd birthday.
Eddie spends his last day working at Ruby Pier Amusement Park, like he has for most of his life. His job is to maintain and fix the park’s many rides, attractions, and games. He always wanted to leave Ruby Pier. But after he came back from getting injured in the war, he felt stuck in his old life there.
Eddie hears screams. He looks up and sees that the Freddy’s Free Fall ride has a broken cart. He and his co-worker Dominguez are able to get the terrified passengers off the ride. But then, the broken cart begins to fall. Eddie sees a young girl sitting in harm’s way, so he runs towards her. The last thing he remembers is feeling her small hands in his.
Suddenly, he finds himself in heaven. Eddie learns that in heaven, you will meet five people. Each of these people played an important part in your life, even if you didn’t know it at the time. Meeting these people is meant to help you understand the meaning of your life.
When Eddie first arrives in heaven, it looks like the Ruby Pier he knew as a boy. He gets up to look around and finds that his body and mind feel young again. He is able to run and he feels no pain or worry.
He hears a voice beckon him into a tent he recognizes from the freak show in his youth. Inside, he sees a man with blue skin. The man used to work at Ruby Pier when Eddie was a boy, but they never met.
The Blue Man’s name is Joseph Corvelzchik. As a boy, Joseph was very nervous. When he got older, he went to a chemist to try and calm his anxiety. The pharmacist gave him silver nitrate, not knowing that it was a poison that would leave his skin permanently blue.
Joseph was outcast from society because of his blue skin. He was forced to take a job in the freak show at Ruby Pier. One day, Joseph was practicing driving in his friend’s car when he saw a baseball roll across the road. A young boy ran to chase it. Joseph swerved out of the way, but the stress caused him to have a heart attack. He died that day.
Every story has different angles. It turns out that the young boy chasing the baseball was Eddie on his seventh birthday. Eddie unknowingly killed the Blue Man.
Eddie is worried that the Blue Man only told him this story to make Eddie pay for his part in Joseph’s death. But the Blue Man assures him that the lesson to take away from his story is that that all lives are connected and nothing is completely random. We shouldn’t waste any time thinking that we are alone.
Eddie finds himself in a desolate terrain. This is a place that has haunted Eddie for years. There are booming noises in the sky above him. Eddie army crawls through the mud to hide under a bush. After a while, he hears a familiar voice from high in the tree above him. Eddie is carried up into the tree, and sees his old Captain from the war.
Eddie enlisted for the war thinking that it would make him a man. He learned a lot of lessons from his time in the military, especially from his time in captivity.
Eddie was taken prisoner along with the Captain and three other men: Smitty, Morton, and Rabozzo. He suffered terrible conditions, including watching Rabozzo be shot in the head.
One day, Eddie convinced his guard to let him juggle some rocks. Eddie threw the rocks into the faces of the guards, and the prisoners were able to fight for their freedom. They killed their captors and decided to burn down the barracks.
Just as Eddie sent the last building up in flames, he saw a small shadow moving inside. He became manic, thinking he left a child burning inside. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the burning building until he felt an intense pain in his leg.
Sometime later, Eddie woke up in a medical unit. He learned that he’d been shot in the leg, and the wound will never fully heal. After that, Eddie was never the same.
The Captain looks straight at Eddie and tells him that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg all those years ago. He knew that Eddie would never have been able to leave that burning building, so he had to take Eddie’s leg to save Eddie’s life.
Later that night, the Captain was driving the transport with an unconscious Eddie in the back. He hopped out to look for danger on the road ahead. Just as he signalled to his soldiers that the road was clear, a land mine exploded under his foot. The Captain was launched into the air and torn into a hundred pieces.
The Captain tells Eddie that he’s been waiting for him all this time because he has a lesson that Eddie needs to hear. He says that sacrifice is a part of life that we are meant to be proud of. He asks for Eddie’s forgiveness for shooting him in the leg. Realizing that the Captain sacrificed his own life to save Eddie’s, Eddie shakes the Captain’s hand.
Eddie finds himself on the top of a mountain. He can see the sign of a diner flickering in the distance, so he walks towards it. Inside, he sees his father sitting at a booth in the corner. Eddie tries to yell out to his dad, but gets no response.
An elegant old woman tells Eddie that he shouldn’t be angry at his father, because he can’t hear Eddie’s calls. The woman introduces herself as Ruby.
Ruby left school at age fourteen to work in a diner called the Seahorse Grill. One day, a handsome, wealthy man named Emile came into the diner. Emile enjoyed risky investments and loved taking Ruby to fun places. When Ruby agreed to marry Emile, he promised to build her a theme park so that they could stay forever young. That is how Ruby Pier became built.
One night, Ruby Pier caught on fire. Emile was injured, and became depressed. Ruby moved their family away from Ruby Pier, and wished for the rest of her life that it had never been built.
Ruby tells Eddie that all things that happen and people who live before you’re born still have an effect on your life. She and Emile were the reason that Eddie worked at Ruby Pier. But that’s not what Ruby really wants to talk to Eddie about. She’s here to tell Eddie why his father died.
All children become damaged to some degree by their parents. Over the course of his life, Eddie’s father damaged him through neglect, then violence, then silence. Eddie’s father rarely held Eddie. He would beat Eddie and his brother, Joe. One night, Eddie grabbed his father’s fist, instead of letting him hit Eddie like normal. That was the last time his father ever spoke to him.
On Eddie’s thirty-third birthday, Eddie’s mom called him to tell him that his father had collapsed and gone to the hospital. He eventually died of pneumonia after coming home drunk and wet from the ocean. Eddie was disappointed in his father’s unheroic death. When Eddie decided to move home to take care of his mother, he blamed his father for all of his disappointment at being stuck in Ruby Pier.
Ruby shows Eddie the real reason for his father’s death: Eddie’s father jumped into the ocean to save his friend Mickey Shea. Mickey had gotten drunk and tried to kiss Eddie’s mother. Even though Eddie’s father had planned to hurt Mickey, he ultimately chose to save his life when he saw him fall into the ocean unconscious.
Ruby tells Eddie that he should learn from this story that holding onto anger is poisonous. You may think anger will act as a weapon toward others, but it only hurts you. She tells Eddie that he needs to forgive his father for all that he blamed him for.
So Eddie goes back into the diner and makes amends with his father.
Eddie finds himself in a small, round room filled with doors. Behind each door is a different wedding in a different country. He enters one door to find a beautiful Italian wedding. Eddie sees a young woman handing out candied almonds. The woman is his wife, Marguerite.
Marguerite and Eddie met at Ruby Pier on Eddie’s seventeenth birthday. They fell in love, and she waited for him when he went away to war. They were married in a small Chinese restaurant and lived in Ruby Pier for their whole lives together. She always liked that they could see the Ferris wheel from their kitchen window.
Marguerite was unable to bear her own children, and she asked Eddie to adopt with her. Although he thought they were too old, he agreed to try. Just before they were about to adopt, Marguerite got into a car accident. She had been driving to the race track to apologize to Eddie for their fight. Her recovery took time, and they lost the chance to adopt. Their relationship suffered from blame and disappointment, and it took many years for them to get their love back.
When Marguerite was 47, she was diagnosed with cancer. Eventually, she died in the hospital. Eddie couldn’t help but feel angry that he lost his love so early.
Marguerite tells Eddie that even though she died, he still carried her love with him. Even though life has to end, that doesn’t mean love has to end. She assures Eddie that she could feel his love all this time, all the way in heaven.
Eddie and Marguerite dance together one last time before she disappears from his arms.
Eddie is floating in a white place. He hears a squealing noise that has haunted his dreams for years, and he feels frightened. But then, the ground forms under his feet. He looks around and sees that the noise is actually the sound of thousands of children playing in a beautiful river. A small girl waves to Eddie, and he goes toward her. She says her name is Tala.
Tala notices the pipe cleaners in Eddie’s pocket, so he makes her a little dog. He asks if she likes it. Without answering, Tala tells Eddie that she used to have to hide from soldiers. She says, “You burn me.” Eddie knows that the shadow he saw in the flames on the day he was freed from captivity must have been Tala. He begins to sob.
Tala steps into the river and takes off her shirt to reveal that her body and face are covered with burns and scars. Eddie takes a stone and washes her little body until all of the scars are gone.
Tala uses her fingers to tell Eddie that she is his fifth person.
Eddie can’t help but cry when he looks into Tala’s eyes. She asks Eddie why his life was so sad. He says that he always felt as though he was meant to leave Ruby Pier, but couldn’t.
Tala tells Eddie that he was meant to stay at Ruby Pier. It was his job to keep children safe. This way, he could make up for the harm he caused Tala.
Finally, Eddie asks Tala if he was able to save the young girl at Ruby Pier before his death. Tala says he was able to push her out of the way of the falling car. Eddie is confused because he felt the girl’s small hands in his before he died. But Tala tells him that those were her hands pulling him into heaven.
The river waters begin to rise, and they carry Eddie away. When he emerges, he sees thousands of men, women, and children at Ruby Pier amusement park—all the people he has kept safe over the course of his life. Eddie floats up above the park. At the top of the Ferris wheel, Marguerite waits for him with open arms. Marguerite’s smile and the voices of the children down below are like a message from God: Eddie is home.
This story begins at the end, on the day that a man named Eddie dies. Like most endings, Eddie’s death is also a beginning, even though he doesn’t know it.
Eddie spends his final hour at Ruby Pier amusement park, a place that he has worked for most of his life. He is the maintenance man, so his job is to maintain and fix the park’s many rides, attractions, and games. After so many years, he can detect problems with the rides just by listening to them. He is an old, resilient man. He has the stature and dress of a workingman, which is exactly what he is.
Eddie walks with a cane now because of a knee injury he got in the war. He has white hair and a strong, barrel chest. Despite Eddie’s past of alley fights in his youth, the park’s regulars trust Eddie and children like him. Many people have taken to calling him “Eddie Maintenance,” like it says on his name tag. He doesn’t think that’s funny.
Today is Eddie’s 83rd birthday. If he had known he was about to die, he would have gone somewhere else and done something new. He had always dreamed of leaving Ruby Pier behind and starting a different life. But he never got around to leaving after the war. So, he goes about his last day as he did every other.
With thirty-four minutes left to live, Eddie walks into the amusement park maintenance shop. There, he talks with Dominguez, one of the fellow workers. Dominguez tells Eddie that he is planning a trip to Mexico with his wife. Eddie takes out 40 dollars, hands it to “Dom,” and tells him to get his wife a nice gift. Then, he walks away.
With only 19 minutes left in his life, Eddie goes to sit in his special spot. It’s an old aluminum beach chair that he has placed behind the ride where he first met his late wife Marguerite. The ride used to be called the Stardust Band Shell in those days. The night they met, Eddie and Marguerite danced together on the boardwalk. Listening to the sounds of the ocean, he visualizes that moment, which he considers the snapshot of true love. Eddie used to think of his wife all the time, but lately, he tries to forget the pain like an old wound.
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.
Just as the passengers are being taken off the dangerous ride, Eddie realizes that there must be something wrong with the cable. He screams for Dom to keep the cart at the top, but it’s too late. He sees the cart hurling toward the ground. Just underneath, the little girl with the pipe cleaner bunny is crying out for her mom.
Without hesitation, Eddie runs toward the girl, ignoring the pain in his injured knee. He jumps toward her and feels her small hands just before the impact and a flash of light. Then, he feels nothing.
Eddie’s First Birthday
In a crowded hospital room in the 1920’s, Eddie’s father smokes a cigarette and waits. Finally, a nurse enters and calls his name. He is shown into the nursery where the nurse passes several babies that aren’t his. Then, she nods towards a tiny baby in a blue cap, covered in a blanket. The father takes a deep breath and cries happy tears.
Eddie’s Fifth Birthday
On a Sunday afternoon at Ruby Pier amusement park, Eddie plays with his birthday presents. He got a red cowboy hat and a toy holster. Eddie’s dad plays cards with his fellow maintenance men while his older brother, Joe, does push-ups to impress women.
All of a sudden, a man named Mickey Shea picks Eddie up, turns him upside down, and gives him his “birthday bumps.” According to the Irish tradition, he lifts and lowers Eddie until his head bumps the floor one time for each of his five birthdays. Eddie does not like being upside down.
Once it’s over, Eddie weakly punches Mickey in the arm and tries to run away. Eddie’s mom picks him up, gives him a hug, and walks with him along the pier. Holding his mom’s hand and hearing her call him a good boy makes everything in the world feel right-side-up again.
Eddie did not get to witness anything after his final breath. He didn’t see the cart shatter or the crowd on the pier. He remembers the little girl’s face as she cried and the feeling of her hands in his. Then what? He wonders if he was able to save her.
Eddie is floating in the sky, which turns from pink to yellow to green to sapphire. He feels calm. Any pain or sadness he had in life has vanished. He wonders where his worry has gone. Now, he is dropping towards a colorful ocean, but he is not afraid.
Eddie wakes up in a teacup. Though his instinct is to reach for his cane, he realizes it isn’t there and he doesn’t need it. His back doesn’t hurt. His knee doesn’t throb. He jumps out of the teacup and lands awkwardly on the ground. Three things strike Eddie as odd:
Eddie begins to walk around and take in his surroundings. Realizing he feels no pain, he starts to run for the first time in 60 years - the first time since the war. He runs and leaps and tries to fly like a child would. He only stops when he hears a voice.
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.”
“Don’t be afraid,” says the Blue Man. Although his voice is soothing, Eddie is still confused. He wonders why he is seeing this man that he never even knew.
The Blue Man begins to explain some things. He explains that Eddie feels like a young boy again because he was a child when the two crossed paths. He explains that, at this point, Eddie could have been dead for a minute, or an hour, or a thousand years. And he tells Eddie that he has come to heaven.
In heaven, the Blue Man explains, you will meet five people. Each of these people played an important part in your life, even if you didn’t know it at the time. Meeting these people is meant to help you understand the meaning of your life.
Although Eddie wants to ask the Blue Man questions, he finds he cannot speak. The Blue Man tells him that when you first arrive in heaven, you lose your voice so that you can listen. However, Eddie manages to make out one question—he asks how the Blue Man died. Slightly surprised, he smiles and says that Eddie killed him.
Eddie’s Seventh Birthday
For his seventh birthday, Eddie gets a brand new baseball. He and Joe play catch along Ruby Pier. Pretending to be a professional baseball player, he launches the ball toward his brother. But Joe ducks and the ball goes rolling across the boardwalk and behind the freak show tent.
Eddie and Joe enter the tent to retrieve the baseball. Joe gets scared and runs away crying. Eddie bravely gets the ball and goes toward the arcade after his brother.
Eddie tries to tell the Blue Man that there’s no way he could have caused his death. So the Blue Man tells his side of the story.
The Blue Man’s real name is Joseph Corvelzchik. He and his family immigrated from a small village in Poland and came to work in America. At the age of ten, he was put to work in a sweatshop. One day, Joseph accidentally spilled a bag of buttons in front of the foreman. Furious, the foreman screamed at him until he was so nervous he wet his pants. His father never looked at him the same after that.
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 across the road, and a young boy chasing after it. The Blue Man slammed on the breaks and swerved out of the way to avoid hitting Eddie. He lost control of the car, and suffered extreme stress. The Blue Man had a heart attack behind the wheel and died alone at Ruby Pier.
The Blue man asks Eddie if he understands. Eddie shivers.
Eddie’s Eighth Birthday
Eddie is sitting on the edge of the couch, pouting and complaining because he has to get dressed up and go somewhere on his birthday instead of getting to play. His father yells at him to be quiet, and Eddie obeys.
Later, at the cemetery, Eddie notices that all the people from Ruby Pier, who normally dress in funny outfits, are wearing black. Eddie knows that he is supposed to be sad about something, but he is secretly counting down the moments until he can go back to his birthday celebrations.
Eddie is scared and defensive. He promises the Blue Man that he had no idea what he had done. He is afraid that he will have to pay for his sin.
The Blue Man smiles and reassures him that he is only here to learn. He says that all five people that Eddie will come across in heaven have one lesson to teach him: that all lives are connected and nothing is completely random.
The Blue Man lifts his hand and suddenly they are standing in the cemetery where he was buried. Eddie looks around at the funeral he attended as a boy, realizing he had no idea the part he played in it. He wonders if there was a funeral for his own death. He asks the Blue Man if he saved the little girl at the pier. The Blue Man doesn’t answer, so Eddie assumes that his death was a waste.
The Blue man says, “the only time wasted is the time we spend thinking we’re alone.”
The Blue Man takes Eddie into a hug and Eddie is flooded with all of the emotions that the Blue Man felt in his life - the nerves, the loneliness, the embarrassment. As the Blue Man goes to leave, his skin turns a lovely shade of caramel, the most beautiful skin Eddie has ever seen.
Eddie tries to call to the Blue Man, to ask him to stay, but he is suddenly carried into the air. He flies away from the cemetery and past Ruby Pier.
3 P.M., Sunday
The crowd at Ruby Pier stands silently and helplessly around the wreckage of Freddy’s Free Fall. From the back of the group, Dominguez busts through. He sees Eddie’s body and breaks down. Carnival music plays over the loudspeakers as the ambulances arrive and the police tape off the scene. The park is empty by sunset.
Eddie’s Seventeenth Birthday
Up in his bedroom, Eddie can smell the special birthday dinner his mom is cooking for him. He’s reading a comic book when she calls him to come downstairs and join the family.
When he gets to the kitchen, Joe announces that Eddie met a girl the night before at Ruby Pier. Eddie is embarrassed, but Joe doesn’t stop. He continues to say that Eddie wants to marry this girl. Eddie punches Joe on the arm, and the two fight until their father breaks it up.
Later, after dinner, Eddie’s mother turns on the radio to news of war. Because it’s Eddie’s birthday, she chooses to turn the dial until there’s music. She asks Eddie to dance with her like he danced with the girl he met. Soon, Eddie, Joe, and their mother are all dancing around the living room and laughing together.
When Eddie’s feet meet the ground, he finds himself surrounded by rubble and lifeless terrain. The sky is changing colors again, from deep blue to dark gray. He feels his body, stronger than before but less flexible. Then, the sky explodes and hot air whips him in the face. Once again, Eddie starts to run. But this time, he runs like a soldier.
It starts to rain and Eddie hears a booming noise. Instinctively, he dives down and begins to army crawl through the mud until he reaches a rifle stuck into the ground with a helmet on top. This is how they used to mark a grave. Eddie reads the dog tags and is terrified to see his own name. Crouching under a bush, he remembers when he enlisted for the war.
When the rain stops, Eddie crawls out from under the bush. Wet and shivering, he looks around and notices that he’s been in this desolate place before—it has haunted him for years. Suddenly, he hears a familiar voice from up in the tree. The voice tells him to come up into the tree. Just like that, Eddie finds himself high up in the branches, sitting next to a man in army fatigues. The man looks at him with red eyes, and Eddie knows at once it is the Captain he knew from the war.
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.
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 collapsed. Crazy Two shot him in the head right there in front of the others. From then on, Eddie stopped praying and stopped waiting. He and the Captain talked about escaping any time they were alone. Then, one day, Eddie saw their opportunity.
Crazy Three was on guard duty in the barracks and was passing the time by trying to juggle large rocks. Growing up at Ruby Pier, Eddie knew that he could amaze the guards with his juggling. Innocently, he asked for the rocks. When Eddie began to juggle, all four guards came in to watch. They were mesmerized. That’s why they couldn’t react in time when Eddie started hurling the rocks into their faces.
Eddie, Smitty, Morton, and the Captain fought the four guards to the death. They ran to freedom, stopping only to burn down the barracks they were leaving behind.
Eddie’s Eighteenth Birthday
This year, Eddie’s cake is decorated with the words “Good luck! Fight hard!” Eddie is playing with his little cousins when the door opens and Marguerite walks in from the rain. She has brought him a birthday gift—a going away gift—and the sight of her holding it gives Eddie butterflies. He wonders if this is a weakness that he shouldn’t take to war.
Later that night, after celebrating his birthday with the family, Eddie takes Marguerite for a walk along the Ruby Pier boardwalk. They eat taffy and play games and hold hands. It’s like a scene from a movie.
All night, there has been something on Eddie’s mind that he hasn’t been able to ask. Finally, Marguerite saves him from the awkwardness of having to ask: She promises to wait for him. Just as the rain starts to fall, she asks Eddie to come home safely. He isn’t sure if it’s tears or rainwater rolling down her cheeks.
The choice to burn down the barracks was an easy one to make. The freed soldiers were furious and wanted revenge. Eddie watched with pleasure as Smitty and Morton began the demolition, then took off to destroy the last hut. He thought about everything they had endured as he set it on fire.
As the hut went up in flames, Eddie heard engines above him. He felt relieved realizing there was a chance at rescue. Just then, he saw a small shadow moving behind the window of the burning hut. He called out, afraid there was a child trapped in the fire.
Morton called out to Eddie that it was time to move. Eddie remained, calling out to the shadow he had seen. Morton, knowing that time was limited, attempted to pull Eddie away. But Eddie fought back. He pushed Morton to the ground and continued staggering toward the barn frantically. He was convinced that everything he saw was an innocent person burning. He felt overwhelmed with everything he had been through and witnessed in the war so far. He continued toward the barn, even though his clothes started to catch fire. Still, he called out to the shadow.
Suddenly, Eddie felt an intense pain rip through his leg. Screaming, he fell to the ground. He closed his eyes and prepared himself for death. But when he opened his eyes again, he was in a transport vehicle with Morty, Smitty, and the Captain. He couldn’t feel his knee.
Some time after that, Eddie awoke in a medical unit with a bullet still partially lodged in his leg. Two surgeries weren’t enough to fix the damage to his nerves, tendons, and bones. He was told that he would always have a limp, one that would only get worse with age. After that, Eddie was different, more withdrawn. The war was in him, just like the bullet, and he would never be the same.
Back up in the tree’s branches, the Captain asks Eddie what he knows of the Captain’s past. Eddie shrugs, so the Captain explains that he is from a military family. The Captain had been preparing to join the service his whole life. But he was never prepared for the pressure of having so many soldiers look to him for answers and for safety. He knew he couldn’t promise to keep everyone alive. Instead, he promised never to leave any man behind.
Eddie nods and agrees that he looked to the Captain for guidance in the war. He tells him that the Captain’s promise always meant a lot to him.
The Captain looks straight at Eddie and tells him that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg all those years ago.
Eddie, looking down at his bad leg, is immediately filled with a kind of rage he hasn’t felt in years—the kind of rage that makes you want to hurt someone. He tackles the Captain and they fall out of the tree and into the mud. Eddie doesn’t stop. He continues to yell at the Captain, punching him in the chest and asking him why. The Captain doesn’t fight back. Finally, he is able to put his arm up to Eddie’s chest and explain: He took Eddie’s leg to save his life.
The Captain says that he knew Eddie would never have left that burning building, and that he couldn’t let him stay there to die. Then, he tells Eddie that he is glad that the others were able to get him to safety, even though they weren’t able to fix his leg like he thought they would be.
Eddie is confused. Why did the Captain say that “the others” got him to safety? He remembers that the Captain never made it back from the war, but he always assumed that he had fallen in a later combat. The Captain looks off to the distance, and when Eddie turns to look, their surroundings have changed. This is what he sees:
Eddie is overcome. He says that he had no idea about the terrible circumstances of the Captain’s death. He asks the Captain if he’s been waiting for Eddie here, in the place of his death, this whole time. But the Captain counters by saying that Eddie doesn’t understand what time really is.
The Captain tells Eddie to think about Adam and Eve. The first time Adam ever went to sleep, he thought it was the end of his existence. But he woke up the next day with a whole new day before him, and the memory of the day before. The Captain smiles and says that’s what heaven is for: To understand all your yesterdays.
The Captain tells Eddie that he’s been waiting for him all this time because he has a lesson that Eddie needs to hear. He says that sacrifice is a part of life that we are meant to be proud of. The Captain wants Eddie to understand that he didn’t die for nothing. Because he stepped on that land mine, everyone else in the transport was able to go on living. When Eddie sacrificed his leg, it made him angry and full of regret. But the Captain tells Eddie that he gained something in that moment, too. He just doesn’t know it yet.
The Captain holds out his hand and asks Eddie to forgive him for shooting his leg. Eddie realizes that all the anger he’s been holding onto is nothing compared to the sacrifice that the Captain made. He takes the Captain’s hand and grips it firmly.
As soon as the Captain has Eddie’s forgiveness, the old tree above them begins to grow new leaves. The barren ground that Eddie remembers from the war turns into a beautiful landscape of grass and the sky turns blue. The Captain has seen it this way the whole time he’s been in heaven because his idea of heaven is a world without war.
Knowing that the Captain will be leaving soon, Eddie can’t help but ask if he was able to save the little girl on the pier. The Captain is sympathetic, but can’t tell Eddie what he longs to know. Instead, he throws Eddie his helmet. When Eddie looks down, there’s a photo of Marguerite inside. And when he looks up, the Captain is gone.
7:30 A.M., Monday
Even though Ruby Pier is closed, Dominguez comes into the shop early. He tries to start working, but abandons the project. Soon Willie, another maintenance worker, comes in. He’s holding the newspaper with the story of Eddie’s death. The two sit restlessly for a while as if waiting for Eddie to come in and put them to work.
The Captain teaches Eddie that we should be proud of our sacrifices. Reflect on your own sacrifices and how they’ve helped others or improved your life.
Think of a time when you had to make a difficult sacrifice. What did you feel you were giving up or losing?
Looking back, what silver linings came out of that situation? Did you gain anything as a result of your sacrifice?
Is there something or someone in your life that you would be willing to sacrifice a lot for? What or who makes you feel that way?
Eddie feels himself lifted up on a strong wind. The sky gathers around him and then explodes into a million stars. He finds himself in the most beautiful mountain range, ankle-deep in snow that doesn’t make him cold or wet. In the distance, he sees a flickering light.
Eddie feels his body for clues about where he could be. He’s flabbier in the middle now, but still muscular in his arms. He squeezes his left knee and feels the familiar throbbing pain. Frustrated, he wonders why pain and deterioration would follow you in heaven.
Walking along the silent ridge toward the flickering light, he notices that it is the sign of a diner. Looking in through the glass door, he sees many different kinds of customers that appear to be from many different time periods and walks of life. Then, in the farthest booth from the door, he sees someone he thought he would never see again—his father.
Pounding against the glass, Eddie calls out for his dad over and over again as loudly as he can. But the man in the booth never looks up.
Eddie’s Twenty-Fourth Birthday
Eddie’s parents stand with Joe, Marguerite, and Mickey Shea in the hallway outside Eddie’s V.A. hospital room. They light his candles and carefully approach his bed singing. Eddie can’t help but feel as though he’d rather be alone.
Everyone tries to put Eddie at ease except for his father, who stands against the wall in silence.
Eddie’s Father
All children are damaged by their parents in varying ways and by varying degrees. Over the course of Eddie’s life, the damage done by his father was that of neglect, then violence, then silence.
As an infant, Eddie was rarely held by his dad. As a child, no matter how hard Eddie tried to participate in his father’s interests, like cards and boardwalk maintenance, he was always pushed away. The primary rule for Eddie was “do not disturb.” Thus, the damage of neglect was done.
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 time in his life. Eddie’s father never spoke to him again. The damage of silence was absolute.
Now sitting in the snow outside the diner, Eddie looks in on his father in the diner booth and realizes that he’s still being ignored, even in heaven.
Suddenly, he hears a woman’s voice tell him not to be angry because his father can’t hear him. Looking up, Eddie sees an elegant, old woman standing above him. She has her white hair pulled back to show her gaunt face. She wears an old-fashioned dress made of silk and holds a parasol.
Eddie asks the mysterious woman why his father can’t hear him. She answers that his father’s spirit is a part of her heaven, but he is not really there with her like Eddie is. When Eddie asks why his father would be a part of her eternity, she asks him to follow her.
All at once, Eddie and the old woman are at the bottom of the mountain, far from the diner. Eddie thinks the woman looks familiar. He asks if she is his third person, and she replies that she is. Eddie is overcome with questions.
Why is he meeting a stranger? Isn’t heaven supposed to be the place you go to reunite with all the people you loved in life—like Marguerite, Joe, and his mother? Why did they all have to die before Eddie?
Eddie wants to know if he can see Earth from here, or if he can go back to his life. The old woman tells him that he can’t. This frustrates Eddie, and he begins to rant. He tells the woman that he doesn’t feel like an angel and that heaven doesn’t make any sense to him. He tells her that he can’t remember his own death, and that he just wants peace. The woman tells him that he will only have peace once he makes it with himself.
Instead of explaining to the woman all of the helplessness and agitation he’s been consumed with since the war, he simply reminds her that he doesn’t even know who she is. The woman sits down in mid-air, floating effortlessly, and tells Eddie her story.
The elegant old woman sitting in front of Eddie was not always old or rich. She was once a young working girl, forced to leave school at fourteen to work in a diner called the Seahorse Grill. (When she says the name of the diner, Eddie’s memories come back to him. He had been to that diner many times before. It was right near Ruby Pier).
She was beautiful in those days and many men would see her in the diner and propose. But she was never interested until one day when a handsome young man named Emile made eye contact with her. Soon, they were courting.
Emile was a self-made man of means. He enjoyed taking risks and having fun. The couple would often go to seaside resorts. One day, sitting next to the ocean, Emile asked for her hand in marriage. She said yes, and Emile promised to build her a resort where they could stay forever young.
A few years later, he kept his promise. He opened a new resort at the end of the railroad line. The resort was grand, and had hundreds of performers, workers, and animals on staff. The entrance was extravagantly beautiful.
Floating above the snow, the old woman looks to Eddie as if she expects him to say something. She asks why he isn’t more interested to learn about the place where he and his father worked for so many years. The resort was named after her.
She curtsies and says, “I am Ruby.”
Eddie’s Thirty-Third Birthday
Eddie jolts awake. He is gasping for breath and covered in sweat—he’s been dreaming of war. Knowing he won’t be able to go back to sleep, Eddie rolls quietly out of bed so he won’t wake Marguerite.
Eddie thinks about how different he feels since the war, like he can’t find happiness. He can’t express to Marguerite the darkness he feels inside, and how it has stopped him from living the life he imagined. So he just goes to work driving his taxi.
That night, when he comes home, he hears the song that he and Marguerite danced to the night they met on the pier. Seeing Marguerite standing in her best dress, holding taffy, and singing him happy birthday, Eddie is able to fight off the darkness inside of him. They share a kiss.
Then, a neighbor knocks on the door and tells Eddie there’s someone on the phone. He warns Eddie that something has happened to his father.
It is Eddie’s mother on the phone. She tells him his father collapsed that afternoon at Ruby Pier. One week ago he came home drunk and wet from the ocean. He’s been coughing and feverish ever since. It turns out he has pneumonia.
Eddie’s mother is frantic, saying that she should have taken him to the doctor sooner. Eddie is angry that she would blame herself for this. He can hear her crying through the phone.
Hearing the name Ruby, Eddie knows now why the woman looked familiar. He had seen her photograph at Ruby Pier. He pictures the original entrance to the park, and remembers that Ruby’s face had been painted there. But, the entrance had been destroyed in a fire.
Ruby’s face falls. She recalls how Emile had been preparing for the Fourth of July at Ruby Pier. He brought in fireworks for that weekend. But the night before, some of the park workers got ahold of them. They set them off and the sparks flew. The fire spread quickly. By the time someone warned Emile and Ruby, they could already see the park burning from their bedroom window.
Emile rushed to the scene and attempted to put out the fire with buckets of water. He was burned by a falling column. The tragedy injured his spirit just as much as his body, and he fell into depression. He lost his fortune and the gift he had given his beloved wife.
Emile and Ruby moved far away from Ruby Pier and lived the rest of their lives modestly. For the rest of her days, Ruby only wished for one thing: That Ruby Pier had never been built.
Looking up at the sky above him, Eddie realizes how often he had wished the same thing. But he still can’t figure out why he’s here with this woman he never met, listening to a story that happened before he was born.
Ruby tells him that all things that happen and people who live before you’re born still have an effect on your life. If she had never married Emile, there would be no Ruby Pier. And Eddie would have never worked there.
Eddie assumes that means that she is here to tell him about work. But she isn’t.
“I’m here to tell you why your father died,” says Ruby.
Eddie’s Father, Continued
In the hospital, Eddie’s father’s condition deteriorated. Eddie was forced to help out by taking over his father’s job at the pier on the weekends and evenings after driving his taxi. He was protecting his father’s job, hoping that his father would be able to return to work one day. After years of silence, Eddie went to visit his father in his hospital bed. Unable to think of anything to say, Eddie simply held up his grease-stained fingertips.
When his father died, Eddie felt empty and angry. A drunken fall into the ocean was hardly a heroic way to die. The only thing he kept of his father’s was a deck of cards.
After the small funeral, Eddie’s mother was changed. She still spoke and acted as if his father was there. When Eddie tried to remind his mother that his father was gone, she asked where he’d gone off to.
Eddie and Marguerite moved back into the building where he grew up to take care of his mother. He quit driving taxis and took the job he’d been training for his whole life—working maintenance at Ruby Pier.
Eddie was angry. He cursed his father for dying and trapping him in this life he’d always wanted to escape.
Eddie’s Thirty-Seventh Birthday
Eddie sits in a diner booth, eating breakfast with his buddy Noel. Eddie seems cranky. It’s a hot and humid Saturday morning, and he knows that it will be a busy day at Ruby Pier.
Noel holds up a magazine with a young man on the front, a presidential candidate. Noel is surprised that someone so young could even run for president. Eddie mumbles that the man is about the same age as they are, and they’re getting old. Noel asks if he’s always this fun on his birthday.
The two talk about an accident that happened in a nearby amusement park, a woman and her child who fell to their deaths. Though Eddie doesn’t know any of the people who work in that park, he can’t help but shudder. He wonders who was in charge.
Throughout the meal, Eddie continues to complain. He’s consumed by his darkness. Noel offers to take him to the horse track. Even though Eddie thinks of Marguerite waiting at home, he agrees to go.
Ruby asks Eddie if the pier was really as terrible as Eddie always thought. Eddie tries to explain that he was stuck in a life he didn’t choose, a life just like his father’s. Ruby says that Eddie’s father was hard on him, but asks Eddie to consider if he was hard on his father, as well.
Eddie feels anger growing inside him. His father tried to hit him. His father’s last words to him were “get a job.” He tells Ruby that she didn’t even know his father.
But Ruby knows something that Eddie doesn’t know. With the tip of her parasol, Ruby draws a circle in the snow. Eddie looks down into the circle as though his eyes are falling through a hole. This is what he sees:
Eddie yells out in disbelief. He can’t understand what he just saw. He asks Ruby, but she stays silent. Stepping to the side, she draws another circle in the snow. Eddie tries to resist, but again his eyes fall toward the scene:
When Eddie’s vision returns, he feels tired and heavy. He asks Ruby what his father was doing. Ruby says that he was saving a friend. Even though Eddie’s father had originally been chasing after Mickey with the intent to hurt him, maybe even kill him, he saved Mickey’s life.
Eddie can only focus on what Mickey had done to his mother. But Ruby tells Eddie that Mickey had once been a great friend to his father—Mickey helped him get a job and he loaned the family money when Eddie was born. Eddie’s father acted out of loyalty that night, and died of pneumonia because of it.
Eddie can’t imagine why his father never said anything about that night. Ruby tells him that silence was a refuge for his father, a way to hide his shame for everyone involved. In the hospital, Eddie’s mother stayed by his bedside every day, until one night she went home to rest. That next morning, the nurse found Eddie’s father dead, halfway out the window.
Eddie is confused. Why would he be at the window?
Ruby tells Eddie that during the night, just before he died, Eddie’s father staggered to the window, opened it, and started calling out to Eddie, Joe, and their mother. It seemed that his heart was finally spilling out all that he wanted to say. The cold was too much for him, and he was dead by morning.
Eddie is stunned. Thinking about his tough, old father trying to crawl out the window leaves him with so many questions. He asks Ruby how she knows all of this about his father. She sighs and explains that she was in the hospital room with him. Her husband Emile was the other patient in the room.
Ruby felt connected to Eddie’s family because of their connection with Ruby Pier. She thought that the park had cursed their lives, and her wish that Ruby Pier had never been built followed her all the way to heaven. That’s why Ruby’s heaven is a diner. It’s a place where all of the souls who have ever suffered at Ruby Pier can stay safe, far away from the ocean.
Ruby and Eddie stand. Finally, Eddie admits to Ruby that he hated his father. He hated him for the way he was treated his whole life. Ruby asks Eddie to learn this lesson from her story: Holding onto anger is poisonous. You may think anger will act as a weapon toward others, but it only hurts yourself.
Ruby touches his hand and says, “You need to forgive your father.”
Eddie considers his life after his father’s funeral and how he was never able to break free of the life at Ruby Pier. Over the years, he blamed his father for all the what-ifs left unexplored. He tells Ruby that he was stuck, but Ruby shakes her head. She says that Eddie’s father is not the reason he lived his whole life at the pier.
Eddie attempts to ask Ruby what she means, but she begins walking away. She says that Eddie still has two people left to meet. Then everything goes black.
All at once, Ruby is gone and Eddie is back in front of the diner at the top of the mountain. He realizes she is not coming back, so he slowly enters. Somehow, he knows what he must do. So he walks to the booth at the back of the room.
Eddie drops to his knees in front of his father, who is younger than Eddie now. Eddie feels emotion welling in his chest. Eddie’s father still can’t hear him, but Eddie speaks to him anyway. He tells his father that he has been angry with him for the beating and the silence. But he admits that he didn’t know his father very well, didn’t know what he had been through.
Finally, he leans into his father. Like he used to as a boy, he says “it’s fixed.”
Across the diner, he sees Ruby. She is young and beautiful now. She nods to Eddie and floats away into the sky.
11 A.M., Thursday
Because Eddie has no relatives, there is no one to pay for the funeral. He didn’t leave any instructions. His body and possessions are at the morgue—everything from his wedding ring to his pipe cleaners.
It turns out that Ruby Pier’s owner, Mr. Bullock, uses Eddie’s last paycheck to foot the bill. He opts for a plain wooden casket.
Just before the service, the clergyman calls Dominguez into his office and asks him to share some personal details about Eddie. Dom thinks for a moment before answering that Eddie really loved his wife, whom he never had the chance to meet.
Ruby teaches Eddie that his anger with his father has been acting as a poison against him. Consider what anger or resentment you could release from your life.
Think of a time when you blamed someone else for something that went wrong in your life. How did your anger or resentment toward that person change your attitude toward your own life?
Write a short letter of forgiveness to that person, and try to release any grudge you might still hold toward them.
Eddie looks around and finds himself in a circular room with plain brown walls, a wooden stool, and a mirror. But when he looks into the mirror he doesn’t see himself. Instead, he sees a row of doors behind him. He turns around to face them.
Eddie is startled when he coughs a deep, rattling cough. Then he notices that his skin is thin and dry, his stomach is soft with age, and his knee is stiff. He’s frustrated to realize that he is deteriorating with each new stage in heaven.
Eventually, Eddie starts to open the doors. Each one opens into a different wedding reception, seemingly in a different country. The first wedding might have been German or Swedish. The next door takes him to a Spanish wedding. He sees weddings in what he guesses to be Africa, China, and France. Each of these celebrations has different music and different customs. But to Eddie, they’re all pretty much the same.
Eddie avoided wedding receptions in life. He found them embarrassing. He didn’t want to dance or participate. If he had to go, he chose to stand in the parking lot smoking a cigarette. Now, walking through heaven in his maintenance clothes, he visits each of these weddings and wonders how this has to do with him.
The final wedding he sees seems to be in Italy. He looks around the crowd and sees a beautiful young woman passing out candied almonds asking “Per l’amaro e il dolce?” or “For the bitter and the sweet?” The woman’s voice is almost too much for Eddie to handle. He drops to the floor and whispers “Marguerite.” She responds, “For the bitter and the sweet.”
Eddie’s Thirty-Eighth Birthday
Joe is sitting in Eddie’s maintenance shop showing him a new battery-operated drill. Joe is a hardware salesman now, and makes three times as much money as Eddie does. Eddie has taken the promotion to head of maintenance at Ruby Pier, his dad’s old job. Eddie resents it and wishes he could switch places with Joe.
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 day, not old and suffering like she was toward the end of her life. She asks him to take a walk and lifts him effortlessly off of his injured knee. Eddie is tongue-tied.
Marguerite motions around the Italian village they walk through. She says that she wanted a heaven with weddings behind every door because she loves to see the look of wonder in the eyes of the bride and groom. She asks if Eddie believes they had that same sense of possibility.
Walking on, Eddie asks Marguerite if she also met five people and if they were able to make a difference. She says that they did. He asks if she knows about his life since her own death. Carefully, she answers that she only knows what happened when they were together and why those things happened. She also knows how much Eddie loved her.
But Marguerite doesn’t know how Eddie died. He tries to explain the ride, the accident, Dom, the little girl. It’s the most he’s spoken since arriving in heaven. She smiles and it fills him with sadness. He can only tell her that he’s sorry for his faults, and that he has missed her.
Eddie’s Thirty-Ninth Birthday
Eddie and Noel left work at Ruby Pier to gamble at the race track. Eddie won two bets early on and now has $209 dollars in his pocket. Noel is trying to convince Eddie to risk the money on another bet and win more money for their future child. Eddie feels guilty about gambling his money now that he and Marguerite are planning to adopt. But he places a bet on a horse named Jersey Finch anyway.
Just in the knick of time, Jersey Finch pulls ahead. Eddie has won over $800! He’s excited, so he wants to call his wife and tell her the good news. Noel tries to warn Eddie that Marguerite might not take the news well. That turns out to be true.
On the phone, Marguerite tells Eddie that he has to stop behaving this way. Eddie is angry about the fight and passes his winnings through the window to place another bet. He knows it’s not a good idea.
What Eddie doesn’t know is that Marguerite has decided to come to the track to apologize for fighting with him on his birthday. She gets in the car and drives toward the race track. Up ahead on an overpass, two drunk teenagers are throwing their empty liquor bottles down onto the street below. Marguerite is thinking about Eddie when one of the bottles smashes through her windshield.
Marguerite’s accident sends her to the hospital. She is confined to her bed for months. As a result, they have to give up on the adoption. For many years, Eddie and Marguerite live under the shadow of that disappointment and blame.
In time, Eddie and Marguerite found new ways to speak to each other again and their love grew back.
Three years later, Marguerite passed out in the kitchen. The doctors found a tumor on her brain. When it became clear that the cancer would defeat her, she told them to release her from the hospital. Eddie cooked dinner for all of their friends. Then one morning, Marguerite woke up screaming in pain and they went to the hospital where they could see the Ruby Park Ferris wheel from the parking lot.
In heaven, Eddie doesn’t need to eat or sleep, so there is no way to sense how much time has passed. But he happily spends every moment he can with Marguerite. They attend weddings and talk to each other about everything that has happened since she died. He tells her about meeting the Blue Man and the Captain, and the lessons he learned from them. Marguerite is happy to hear that he has made amends with his father.
One day, Eddie and Marguerite discuss all the changes at Ruby Pier. Eddie apologizes for never getting them out of there, and says that he lost himself after the war. Marguerite tries to get him to explain, but he can’t bear to tell her about his experiences.
Eventually, after many talks and many weddings together, Marguerite and Eddie come back into the small round room. Marguerite sits in front of the mirror. Eddie can see her reflection, but his is still not there.
Marguerite asks Eddie if he was angry with her when she died and left him alone. He tries to deny it, but has to admit that he was angry to have to lose the woman he loved so young. She takes his hands and tells him that he didn’t lose her—she was always with him.
Marguerite explains that even though life has to end, that doesn’t mean love has to end. Lost love is still love. She assures Eddie that she could feel his love all this time, all the way in heaven.
Smiling, Marguerite opens a door and shows Eddie into a small room with an accordion player in the corner. She says that she saved this wedding for last and jokes that they should play bingo.
Eddie takes Marguerite in his arms to dance with her. She looks exactly like she did on the day of their wedding, but Eddie asks her to change into the version of herself that she was at the end of her life. To him, she is still just as beautiful. Holding her in his arms, Eddie closes his eyes and says that he doesn’t want to go on with heaven. He wants to stay here with her.
When he opens his eyes again, she is gone.
3:15 PM, Friday
Dominguez meets with Eddie’s estate attorney to go through his apartment. Dom tells the man that Eddie didn’t have much to leave behind. Entering Eddie’s tidy apartment, Dom realizes how much he misses the old man’s presence at Ruby Pier.
In Eddie’s sock drawer, the attorney finds a small, black box. Inside, there is a black bow tie, a Chinese restaurant menu, an army medal, and a Polaroid of Eddie with a birthday cake, surrounded by kids.
Dom finds the documents they’re looking for and hands them to the lawyer. The lawyer thinks to himself that he’s glad he has more to his name than Eddie did—just a tidy kitchen.
Marguerite teaches Eddie that love does not have to end when life does. Rather, our love for those we’ve lost is still alive within us.
Remember someone you have loved and lost—any friend, family member, or romantic partner. What were some of the things you loved most about them?
How can you continue to keep that person’s love alive and strong within you? What memories will you hold onto when you need to remember and feel their love?
Eddie is hanging in a white, silent place. The only noise is his own labored breathing. Eddie realizes that Marguerite is gone, and is overcome with an empty feeling. After some time, Eddie hears a noise and opens his eyes. This feels different than the first four areas of heaven he’s seen.
He hears the noise again—louder this time. It is a noise that has haunted his dreams. The sound is like a medley of squeals and cackles. He yells into the white void: What do you want?
Then, the noise changes. He hears running water and sees that there is now ground under his feet. He is relieved to see that the noise is nothing but the sound of thousands of children laughing and playing. He wonders if that is what he’s been dreaming about all this time, when he thought he was having nightmares.
One of the children catches Eddie’s eye. The young girl is standing on a boulder, and she motions for him to come towards her. In an attempt to follow, Eddie falls on his bad knee. A burst of wind picks him up and places him down right in front of the little girl.
More of Eddie’s Birthdays
Eddie is 51. It’s his first birthday since losing Marguerite. She would always insist Eddie celebrate his birthday with taffy, friends, and cake. Now, he doesn’t celebrate—he goes to work and comes home to watch TV, as he always does.
Eddie’s 60th birthday is a Wednesday. He makes himself a sandwich and uses a piece of it as bait for fishing.
On Eddie’s 68th birthday, Joe calls him from Florida. Eddie mostly just says “uh-huh.”
Eddie turns 75 on a Monday. He notices that one of the Ruby Pier workers missed a brake test on one of the rides the night before. So Eddie sighs and checks it himself.
Eddie is 82. He has a taxi pick him up from Ruby Pier and take him to the cemetery. He visits his mother’s grave, Joe’s grave, and his father’s. He saves Marguerite for last. He imagines eating taffy with her one last time.
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 fifth person. A tear falls down Eddie’s cheek, and Tala asks him why he was sad in his life. Just like he told the Blue Man, the Captain, Ruby, and Marguerite, Eddie says that he was sad because he was stuck at Ruby Pier his whole life. He didn’t feel that’s where he was meant to be. But Tala tells him that he was meant to stay at Ruby Pier. He was keeping other children safe—making up for the harm that he accidentally caused Tala. Then she calls him “Eddie Maintenance.”
Sitting in the river, Eddie can sense that he will be moving on soon. So he asks Tala if she knows about the little girl he died trying to save. He wants to know if he was able to pull her out in time. Tala says no.
Eddie didn’t pull the little girl, he pushed her out of the way of the falling car and into safety.
Eddie is confused, because the only thing he remembered of his last moment was the little girl’s hands in his. Tala smiles and holds Eddie’s hands. The hands Eddie remembers were Tala’s hands as she pulled him into heaven to keep him safe.
Suddenly, the river water begins to rise. Eddie is carried away by a current. He is still holding Tala’s hand. As he continues to float along, he feels his soul leaving his body. He is going through the colors again, like he did when he first arrived in heaven, and he realizes that these are all of the emotions he felt in life. Soon, he emerges from the water into a dazzling light. This is what he sees:
Letting go of Tala’s hand, Eddie floats up above the park. At the top of the Ferris wheel, Marguerite waits for him with open arms. Marguerite’s smile and the voices of the children down below are like a message from God: Eddie is home.
Ruby Pier Amusement park opened again three days after Eddie’s death. The story stayed in the newspaper for a week. Freddy’s Free Fall reopened the next year with a new name—Daredevil Drop. Dominguez took over Eddie’s job as the head of maintenance.
The apartment Eddie lived in for almost his entire life was rented out to someone new, and all of his possessions were put into a trunk. They were stored alongside some Ruby Pier memorabilia, including a photo of the first entrance.
The young man, Nicky, replaced the car key that he lost at Ruby Pier. He continued to come back to the park. He loved to brag that his great-grandmother was the Ruby, after whom the park was named.
Years passed. Each summer, when the days got longer, people returned to Ruby Pier. They stood in lines to ride the rides.
In heaven, another line was forming: A line of five people in their five chosen heavens. These five people were waiting for a young girl with blonde curls to grow up, to live her life, and eventually to die.
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.
Throughout The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Eddie expresses many times that he feels he was meant for something other than Ruby Pier maintenance. He wanted his life to have purpose. Think about how you can add more purpose into the mundane tasks in your life.
What are some tasks in your life that you know you have to do but can’t find fulfillment in?
If you were to stop performing those tasks, what would the negative consequences be?
How are others around you positively affected when you perform your task well?
Write a reminder to say to yourself next time you’re frustrated with this task. Include the positive effects on those around you and the reasons why you shouldn’t neglect it.
Eddie struggles to communicate with his loved ones. For example, he and his father were never able to tell each other their true feelings. He was never able to tell Marguerite the truth about the war and how it affected him. Eddie’s lack of communication had effects on his personal relationships. Reflect on how you communicate within your relationships.
Think of a difficult truth that you have struggled to tell a loved one in your life. Why were you hesitant to communicate honestly with that person?
If you did eventually tell that person the truth, how did it feel to be open? If you were not able to tell that person the truth, how did it feel to keep it inside?
What is something that you want to communicate to someone in your life right now but are afraid to? What do you have to gain by being honest?