He was nothing now, a leaf in the water, and she pulled him gently, through shadow and light, through shades of blue and ivory and lemon and black, and he realised all these colours, all along, were the emotions of his life. She drew him up through the breaking waves of a great gray ocean, and he emerged in brilliant light above an almost unimaginable scene:

There was a pier filled with thousands of people, men and women, fathers and mothers and children- so many children- children from the past and the present, children who had not yet been born, side by side, hand in hand, in caps, in short pants, filling the boardwalk and the rides and the wooden platforms, sitting on each other’s shoulders, sitting on each other’s laps. They were there, or would be there, because of the simple, mundane things Eddie had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day. And while their lips did not move, Eddie heard their voices, more voices than he could have imagined, and a peace came upon him that he had never known before. He was free of Tala’s grasp now, and he floated up above the sand and above the boardwalk, above the tent tops and spires of the midway, toward the peak of the big, white Ferris wheel, where a cart, gently swaying, held a woman in a yellow dress- his wife, Marguerite, waiting with her arms extended. He reached for her and he saw her smile and the voices melted into a single word from God :

Home.

- The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom

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 accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

- The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom

His father looked at his own clenched fist, short of its mark, and his nostrils flared and his teeth gritted and he staggered backwards and yanked his arm free. He stared at Eddie with the eyes of a man watching a train pull away. 

He never spoke to his son again. 

This was the final handprint on Eddie’s glass. Silence. It haunted their remaining years.

All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence. And now, someplace beyond death, Eddie slumped against a stainless steel wall and dropped into a snowbank, stung again by the denial of a man whose love, almost inexplicably, he still coveted, a man ignoring him, even in heaven. His father. The damage is done.

- The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom

“Shows you did a hard day’s work,” he said, and he held up his own dirty fingernails, before wrapping them around a glass of beer.

By this point- already a strapping teenager- Eddie only nodded back. Unbeknownst to him, he had begun the ritual of semaphore with his father, forsaking words or physical affection. It was all to be done internally. You were just supposed to know it, that’s all. Denial of affection. The damage is done. 

- The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom

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. 

Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his hold man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behaviour. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation. 

- The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom