Maya’s Reviews > The Five People You Meet in Heaven > Status Update

You really didn’t have to do me like that

Love,like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.

People say they "find" love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable. Once she'd gone, he'd let the days go stale. He put his heart to sleep.

I want whatever prayers marguerite used

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them-a mother's approval, a father's nod-are covered by moments of their own accomplish-ments.

•ALL PARENTS DAMAGE their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

"I didn't die for nothing, either. That night, we might have all driven over that land mine. Then the four of us would have been gone."
Eddie shook his head. "But you ..." He lowered his
voice. "You lost your life."
The Captain smacked his tongue on his teeth. "That's the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something pre-cious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

lost.
"I figure it's like in the Bible, the Adam and Eve deal?" the Captain said. "Adam's first night on earth?
When he lays down to sleep? He thinks it's all over, right?
He doesn't know what sleep is. His eyes are closing and he thinks he's leaving this world, right?
"Only he isn't. He wakes up the next morning and he has a fresh new world to work with, but he has something else, too. He has his yesterday."

He learned, as one year turned to two and two years turned toward three, that even strong, muscular men vomit on their shoes when the transport plane is about to unload them, and even officers talk in their sleep the night before combat.

meet."
"Wait," Eddie said, pulling back. "Just tell me one thing,
Did I save the little girl? At the pier. Did I save her?" The Blue Man did not answer. Eddie slumped. "Then
my death was a waste, just like my life."
"No life is a waste," the Blue Man said. "The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."