The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(37)

“That’s not for us,” she said.

“It’s not not for us,” Paulo said, mischievously.

“Are you hungry, Mrs. Velichek?”

A minute later, Paulo and Annie were playfully making sandwiches. Paulo stuffed them high with meat.

“Not so big,” Annie cautioned.

“Don’t listen to her!” Mrs. Velichek said.

“I always listen to her,” Paulo said.

“He better,” Annie replied, but she laughed and elbowed Paulo when she said it.

“Friends, huh?” Mrs. Velichek said. “Honey, who are you kidding?”



They moved in together a month later, and their routines intertwined, like paint colors fading into each other. They shared breakfast, shared toothpaste, shared a cold, shared a mailing address.

Autumn came and winter came and spring came and melted into summer. One bright morning, before leaving for work, Paulo pulled the elastic out of Annie’s hair and she shook free her wavy locks. “Better?” she said, and he said, “Better,” and they could have been talking about everything.

Their marriage was a formality after that. But Paulo had a showman’s heart. He waited until one night, when he had things ready, and he led Annie to the roof of their building, which was lit by small torches and serenaded by classical music from a large white speaker. He pulled a sheet off a large lumpy shape to reveal an unusual sculpture: two giant papier-maché frogs. He had made them to mark the day they met in the schoolyard. One frog wore a necktie and was leaping over the other. Attached to the necktie was a note.

Annie read it.

“One small step for frog, one giant leap for the two of us?”

She burst out laughing. As she turned to Paulo, he already had a ring box open, and Annie didn’t even wait to hear the question.

“Yes,” she gushed. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”



“No,” Annie whispered now.

Paulo blinked.

“You can’t be here.”

He opened his hands.

“I don’t want you to be here!”

He reached for her cheek.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t be here! You had to live! You had to live!”

His fingers grazed her skin, and her entire body seemed to melt with the contact.

“Look, Annie,” he said, “the northern lights.”

Beneath them, through the glassy surface, waves of green and red moved like smoke through the stars.

“Do you know what causes them?”

Annie felt tears streaming down her face.

“You told me so many times,” she answered, her voice quivering. “Particles fly off the sun. They blow to earth on solar winds. They take two days to reach us. And they break into our atmosphere …”

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 earth could 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.”