The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

Lorraine is Annie’s mother and the novel’s deuteragonist. Other than Annie, she is the character who undergoes the most personal transformation from the time the reader knows her at the beginning of Annie’s life to when Annie meets her mother again in the afterlife. Lorraine first appears as a massive vision that fills the entire sky, and Annie is placed inside her hand, as if being cradled by her mother’s love. Lorraine then takes Annie inside her eyes to see life from her perspective.

Lorraine’s life was complex and difficult, as she was abused by Annie’s father and then forced to leave her home with Annie to escape his vindictive ways. She named Annie after Annie Edson Taylor, the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, in the hopes that her daughter would have that kind of courage. Like Annie, Lorraine viewed her own life as a series of mistakes and believed she lacked courage. She saw herself as a failure of a mother, as she first failed to protect Annie, then drove Annie away by isolating her in an attempt to make up for it. As Annie looks back on their time together from her mother’s perspective, she realizes that Lorraine was simply doing the best she could to care for her, and that her larger-than-life mother was actually just a fellow, flawed human being.

Lorraine’s “most painful secret” is prioritizing attention from her boyfriend on the day of Annie’s accident (138). Lorraine feels that everything, up to and including Annie’s injury, was her fault. She felt caught in a cycle of craving attention from men, regardless of whether the men were of strong character or not. When they meet in the afterlife, Annie still does not remember the accident and has not yet accepted it as something that made her life better. Lorraine’s role in Annie’s afterlife experience is to prepare her for meeting Eddie, and she teaches Annie that she must speak her forgiveness aloud for her own sake, so that she can let go and begin to heal. Annie struggled all her life to forgive Lorraine for isolating her and for keeping secrets; only in death, after losing her own child, is Annie finally able to do so.

Lorraine dies of cancer when Annie is in her early twenties, and the small size of her funeral is a testament to the sacrifices that Lorraine made to keep her daughter safe. After Annie forgives her—and forgives herself for resenting her mother—Lorraine disappears. Annie goes to meet her next person in a barrel over a waterfall, showing that she has embraced the name her mother gave her and the courage it is meant to hold.

Paulo is the love of Annie’s life. He represents unconditional love, acceptance, and understanding that Annie does not receive—or does not realize she receives—from anyone else. Paulo and Annie met as children and played a game of leapfrog together, and from that moment on, Annie remembered Paulo as the one person who treated her kindly. Paulo and Annie went their separate ways when they were 14 but reunited in adulthood, showcasing the theme of Interwoven Human Connections. When they reunite, they fall in love quickly and move in together, planning to marry soon after.

Paulo is an eternal optimist with an insatiable confidence, but no arrogance. He empathizes with Annie and tells her that the things she hates about herself—her injury, her upbringing—make her unique and special. Though he does not tell her so until later in life, Paulo loves Annie from a very young age; their marriage is a stark contrast to Annie’s unhappy, short-lived marriage to Walt, which reflected Lorraine’s marriage to Jerry. When Annie and Paulo finally decide to marry, their wedding is filled with joy despite Annie’s fears that something terrible will happen. However, a few occurrences hint at impending disaster; one of which is the pipe cleaner rabbit that Paulo gives Annie, which matches the one Eddie gave her at Ruby Pier before the accident. The novel’s narrator hints that such odd things are not uncommon when death is near, foreshadowing Paulo’s demise and the shape of Annie’s last experiences in the afterlife.

Annie does not find out that Paulo dies until she meets him as her final person in heaven. Annie’s emotions are mixed: she is overjoyed to see him but devastated to learn of his death. Seeing him nearly makes Annie forget everything she has learned. Paulo, however, is at peace, and he teaches her the final lessons she needs to learn. Paulo, as the only person who has ever easily, openly, and unconditionally loved Annie, is the one who brings all the past lessons together and drives home the idea that Annie’s actions and suffering are all a part of living. He tells her that her sacrifice for him was not pointless even though he died, and he reminds her why she cannot stay with him: “You were saved from dying once, Annie. […] It’s why […] you need to go back. To save someone else” (203). He then sends Annie back to her body, and she awakes from her coma with an understanding of Death as a Part of the Life Cycle. Annie is able to move past her grief and pain, secure in the knowledge that Paulo is waiting for her.

Eddie is the protagonist of the first novel in the series, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. He is the third person Annie meets in heaven, the archetypal surly but compassionate and wise old man. He uses the wisdom he gained from his experiences in the first novel to offer Annie a sense of clarity about her life, particularly the accident at Ruby Pier, in which he sacrificed himself to save her. He also provides an instant sense of safety, and Annie feels “like a baby bird crawling beneath the shelter of a mighty wing” upon meeting him (162).

Eddie first appears in the “real” world during Annie and Paulo’s wedding. Annie does not recognize him despite his familiarity, but the narrator explains that occasionally, when death is coming for someone, the living are able to see the deceased. In the afterlife, Annie meets him on the edge of Ruby Pier and learns his true identity. Eddie laments seeing Annie in heaven at such a young age, foreshadowing her later return to Earth.

Upon meeting Annie in the afterlife, Eddie shows Annie the defining events of his life, beginning when he was an infant. This adds depth to their connection and puts Eddie’s rescue of Annie into context, building the theme The Purpose of People, Suffering, and Life. Eddie was abused by his father, just like Annie, and he also empathized with people who were socially cast out, just as Annie was. Annie sees Eddie’s reluctant acceptance of his life as a maintenance worker, which mirrors Annie’s dissatisfaction with her own life. When Eddie shows Annie his memories of the Philippines, where he set fire to the village in which he was captured and accidentally killed a young girl named Tala, Annie briefly loses that initial feeling of safety. However, Eddie explains that meeting his five people taught him how to view his life from a different angle. In meeting Tala in heaven, Eddie learned that his life on Earth as a maintenance worker was not in vain, but instead filled with the important purpose of keeping children safe. He tells Annie, “There’s no such thing as a nobody. And there are no mistakes” (182). In saving Annie and sacrificing his life, Eddie feels absolved of the guilt of killing Tala; Annie’s five people help absolve her of her guilt, too.

Eddie also resolves a source of Annie’s pain that has gone unaddressed for years: the death of her son. In the afterlife, Eddie lets Annie hold her baby. After she returns to life, Annie gives birth to and raises a daughter; she does so without grief and fear, knowing that her son is safely waiting for her with Eddie.

Cleo is Annie’s childhood dog and the second person Annie meets in heaven. Cleo is a round character who first appears to Annie in the form of an elderly woman. She is kind and empathetic, just like Annie, who was drawn to adopt her because they were both similarly injured. Cleo explains that dogs possess an innate sense of empathy and are able to feel what their owners feel. However, for humans, empathy can be interrupted by selfish pursuits. Annie’s empathy was never interrupted, and she was the only person to view Cleo as worthy and deserving of the love and attention that the wounded dog needed.

Cleo teaches Annie about The Purpose of People, Suffering, and Life. Annie views her childhood as a period of struggle, isolation, and loneliness, but Cleo points out that this allowed her to empathize with Cleo in a way that no one else did: “Your loneliness gave me a home. And happiness” (90). Cleo considers the love and loyalty between humans and dogs to be an example of how “divine things happen every day” (92). Annie’s time with Cleo readies her to face her mother, whom Annie resented for much of her life, with an open mind and heart. At the end of their meeting, Cleo transforms back into her dog form, and Annie is able to hold her one last time.

Sameer is the surgeon who reattached Annie’s hand after the accident at Ruby Pier. In the afterlife, he appears at first to be a child riding a train, and only reveals his true identity after showing Annie his own history. He is the first person that Annie meets in heaven and chooses to meet Annie in his child form, greeting her with light sarcasm.

Sameer’s version of heaven is an illustration of how his childhood followed him into adulthood. A train accident caused him to lose his arm, but it was reattached in the first surgery of its kind. Sameer playfully brags about how he made history because of it, and it was his foolish decision to chase a train that led to a major advancement in medicine. This, in turn, inspired him to become a surgeon, and he used a new technique on Annie that also made breakthroughs in the field. In this way, Sameer teaches Annie that a single person’s life is only one small part of a much larger chain of Interwoven Human Connections, and that one person’s painful experience can save many, many lives, just as his and Annie’s accidents did. He grants Annie the ability to begin looking at the bigger picture, outside of her own life: “We forget that ‘our’ time is linked to others’ times. We come from one. We return to one. That’s how a connected universe makes sense” (61).

Sameer’s childhood whimsy is present in the way he haphazardly drives his train through various cities and landscapes before hurtling Annie and himself through the front window. He also brings Annie back into her childhood body, allowing her to sit in the body of her eight-year-old self as she recovered from the reattachment surgery. As Annie moves through the different versions of heaven, she physically matures, which shows her inner growth.