The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(3)

Annie and Paulo scampered to the waiting limousine, ducking rice being thrown from paper cups. Paulo opened the door and Annie tucked inside, her dress trailing.

“Whoo-hoo!” Paulo laughed, sliding next to her.

The driver turned around. He was mustached, with brown eyes and teeth stained from tobacco.

“Congratulations, folks.”

“Thank you!” they answered in unison.

Annie heard a rap on the glass; her Uncle Dennis was gazing down, a cigar in his mouth.

“All right, you two,” he said, as Annie lowered the window. “Be good. Be careful. Be happy.”

“Can’t do all three,” Paulo said.

Dennis laughed. “Then just be happy.”

He grabbed Annie’s fingers and she felt her eyes moisten. Dennis was her mother’s brother and a respected surgeon at the hospital where Annie worked. After Paulo, he was Annie’s favorite man in the world. Bald and paunchy and prone to easy laughter, Dennis had always felt more like a father to Annie than her real father, whose name was Jerry (“Jerry the Jerk,” her mother called him) and who left when Annie was young.

“Thank you, Uncle Dennis.”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“Your mom would have loved this.”

“I know.”

“She’s watching.”

“You think so?”

“Yep.” He smiled. “Annie. You’re married.”

“I’m married.”

He tapped her head lightly.

“A new life, kid.”

Ten hours left.



No story sits by itself. Our lives connect like threads on a loom, interwoven in ways we never realize.

At the same time Annie and Paulo had been dancing at their wedding, forty miles away, a man named Tolbert went to grab his keys. He remembered that his truck was low on gas, and knowing it would be hard to find a station open at this hour, he grabbed the keys to his wife’s car instead, a small, boxy vehicle with a tire low on air. He left the house without locking the door and glanced up at the clouds, which laced the moon in gray.

Had he taken the truck, this story would be different. Had Annie and Paulo not stopped for a final round of photographs, this story would be different. Had the limousine driver remembered to bring a bag that was sitting by his apartment door, this story would be different. The tale of your life is written second by second, as shifting as the flip of a pencil to an eraser.



“But we’re gonna get maaaaa-rried!” Paulo sang, and Annie laughed as he forgot the words. She turned her back and pulled his strong grip over her. There are touches in your life that identify the person making contact, even if your eyes are closed. For Annie, it was Paulo’s hands on her shoulders, as they were years ago in that leapfrog game.

As they were right now.

Annie saw his gold wedding band. She breathed a deep, contented sigh. They’d made it. They were married. She could stop worrying that something unexpected might derail things.

“I’m really happy,” she said.

“Me, too,” Paulo replied.

The limo pulled away. Through the window, Annie waved, as the guests clapped and gave the thumbs-up sign. The last person she saw was the old man in the linen cap, waving back, almost mechanically.



You have heard the phrase “heaven on earth.” It suggests something wonderful, like the happy send-off from a wedding. But “heaven on earth” can mean something else; something that was happening to Annie right now, as the old man—Eddie from Ruby Pier—waved goodbye from the crowd.

At certain moments, when death is close, the veils pull back between this world and the next. Heaven and earth overlay. When they do, it is possible to glimpse certain souls already departed.

You can see them awaiting your arrival.

And they can see you coming.



Nine hours left. The night was misty and rain began to fall. The driver flipped on his windshield wipers. As they slapped back and forth, Annie thought about what lay ahead. First, their honeymoon, a long-planned trip to Alaska to see the northern lights. Paulo was obsessed with them. He’d shown Annie hundreds of photographs, and teasingly tested her on their origin.

“I know, I know,” Annie would recite from memory. “Particles fly off the sun and blow to earth. They take two days to reach us. They break into our atmosphere where it’s most vulnerable, at—”

“The top of the world,” Paulo would finish.

“The top of the world.”

“Very good,” he’d declare. “You pass.”

After Alaska, a new life awaited. Paulo and Annie had joined an organization that brought water to impoverished villages. They’d signed up for a year. It was a big leap for Annie, who had never been out of the country. But her nursing skills could be put to good use, and Paulo believed in charity, often building things for free (his friends joked that he was “trying to win a merit badge every day of his life”). That made Annie smile. She’d made bad choices in men before. But Paulo. Finally. A partner to be proud of.

“I can’t wait,” Annie said, “to get to—”

The limo swerved and missed their exit.

“Dang,” the driver said, looking in the rearview mirror. “The guy wouldn’t let me in.”