The Five

This is for Angela Hepworth's unofficial challenge that I found most intriguing and caused me to reach a full of understanding of why I was profoundly touched by this mostly obscure movie, entitled: The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

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If you know me well, you know that I am not a Hallmark kind of girlie-girl. (Please forgive if I step on your toes if you are one to like that genre.) We all follow the beat of a different drummer and that's okay. It's just that I am not sappy with emotions and don't seek out romantic drama or wishes. Maybe it's because years of Nursing caused me to consider the emotional impact of others before considering my own. And by the time I got home from hard and emotional days at work, I just wanted to put those kind of feelings aside and forget about them. (Self-survival?)

So that brings us as to why I fell upon this movie at all. (I had not heard of the 2003 book or its author, Mitch Albom, even though I would later find out that it had been on the NY Times best-seller list for 95 weeks.) After work, a bite to eat, and a quick shower, I jumped into bed and flipped on the television set, scrolling to find something that captured my imagination and took me to a happy place.

If I remember correctly, as to what drew me in...I think it was the image of Ruby Pier and the narration, using the unmistaken voice of actress, Ellen Burstyn (who plays Ruby,) saying: "This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time."

After that hook, I was all-in. At first, it was a bit weird, eerie, and somehow dark, like the freak shows you might see at old carnivals way back in "the day." In fact, parts were downright sad and depressing as the movie went on. But I stayed, still intrigued, still hoping for Eddie, an everyday sort of a "nobody" as he carried on and I so wished for him to have some type of peace and joy in this life. (Even though Ellen aka Ruby had warned me that Eddie would die in the sun.)

And right about then, Mitch Albom took me on a journey I never thought I would imagine in this lifetime. He took me to Heaven. Not as the Bible had pictured it to be in our human brains, but of how LOVE might see it from our beyond and scope. And I was hit hard with emotions I couldn't escape. I came face to face with all my humanness and was forced to make changes in the error of my own thinking about life, the frailties of others and inside of myself, and my unforgiveness in the deepest parts of me that still existed.

In the end, I began to have a true understanding of spirituality and the connectedness of what we see as a jumbled mess we have made of things in our own existence. It began to make sense, thanks to Eddie and the five people he met in Heaven.

The next day I rushed out to buy every Mitch Albom book I could find and haven't been disappointed in any of them. "The Five" is still my favorite, though. I carry it with me in my heart and soul. And I am very grateful that Mitch Albom was able to channel all that Love from God in Heaven and make it easy for me to comprehend.

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