“Only five?” those were the very words I uttered the first time I read about this upcoming book a couple of years ago. Gosh, I’m sure I’ll meet more than five folks up there beyond the pearly gates.

Thus, when a close pal offered to lend me her copy and trusting her taste for a great read, I gladly looked forward to it. Besides, I’ve read and enjoyed the author’s previous book, Tuesdays with Morrie.

A certified bookworm since grade school (from Nancy Drew to Hardy Boys to Mills & Boon and Harlequin Romances (skipped “Sweet Dreams Romance”) to Emily Post to Harold Robbins to Sidney Sheldon to John Grisham and tons of magazines in-between) reading to me is the ultimate luxury! With “Five People” covering only 196 pages, I was able to finish it in a single bound! a la Superman!

Personally, the best gauge of a book’s (or a movie’s, for that matter) success is if I’m willing to read (or watch) it again. With only 24 hours a day, time is a highly precious commodity in this fast-paced 21st century; therefore, unless it’s really worth it, I wouldn’t bother. So, will I re-read “Five People’?

Well, every leaf of “Five People” was a delight! It was one of those that I didn’t want to put down for a long time as I wanted to find out just who exactly are the mysterious FIVE! What keys do they unlock? What answers do they have to questions that yet to be asked?

The book oddly enough opens with “The End” explaining it, as I quote: 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 that time. Hmmp, a zero-calorie food for thought.

In Mitch Albom’s flashbacks, we, almost always, find Eddie celebrating his birthdays … from the actual day that he was born, to his 5th, 7th, 17th, 24th, 37th (up until his untimely death at his 83rd), thanks to the annual tradition started by his mother and then carried on by his beloved wife, Marguerite. And each birthday was a buildup of milestones in his seemingly insignificant life.

Eddie was a child of the 1920’s. The healthy young man that he was in the 1940s, off he marched to the warfront! Would you believe his most traumatic war experience was “Made in the Philippines”! Like most soldiers, he returned home to good ol’ America bearing the ugly psychological and physical wounds. And then he spent the rest of his life bearing the scars of those wounds! Add in his broken relationship with his physically (& emotionally) abusive father, and you got a man who led a mundane life.

For all his faults and hang-ups (we all have our fair share of those!) Eddie’s strengths were his faithfulness to his beloved wife (she went much, much ahead of him, succumbing to the dreaded cancer at age forty-seven! and childless) and his seriousness with his work. He inherited his late father’s maintenance job at theme park Ruby Pier. All he needed to do was to listen. After decades of his “management by walking about,” he could hear trouble, he said, in the spits and stutters and thrumming of the equipment. He was in fact, killed in action, so to speak.

Insignificant.

Mundane.

Ordinary.

Monotonous.

One or two of these would probably been Eddie’s reply had he been asked to evaluate his long life.

But not until he met the magic five! The five who helped Eddie understand and realize that his life was not as useless as he thought! That all those twist and turns on those screws and all those painful limps from one ride to another and all the grease that could fit in his ten fingers, were all worth the trouble!

That at the commencement of his eternal life, he had the opportunity to witness the myriads of peoples who wouldn’t be even breathing and living had it not been for him at work at Ruby Pier. And that was his closure---the peace in his heart and the smile on his lips. The peace and the smile that was so elusive during the eight decades of his earthly life.

“Five People” gave me “five” points to live by …
(1) that our life is so, so, valuable. Leading a long life does not necessarily equate to leading a fruitful life (note that Jesus Christ only had 33 years, yet after two thousand years, we’re still reaping the fruits of His seemingly short life on earth!);
(2) that as human beings, we are forever connected to one another, whether by blood, by community, by work, by common friends (and enemies), by common experiences …
(3) that life goes on; which is why, as Blue Man (whoops, a giveaway!), says, we are drawn to babies and funerals. One man’s death is another’s birth … One man’s lost is another’s gain …
(4) that forgiveness, commitment, communication and love, collectively called the four walls of marriage, can also be called the walls of any lasting relationship or those that we want to matter …
(5) that major and minor everyday experiences will somehow in the end make some sense and surprisingly, even accomplish something totally unexpected! That all the pieces of our life’s jigsaw puzzle will eventually fall into the right places and at the right time!

What’s in store for us beyond the pearly gates? Do we also expect five people?

Or maybe more, if you think your life is a bit more complicated than Eddie’s!

Well, whether it’s five or twenty-five … it’s still CAPRE DIEM.

That as we slide between our sheets, we welcome the respite of sleeps, confident that we have done our day’s humble share in the responsibilities that we have been entrusted with.

That as we swing our legs and stretch our arms to start another day, we look forward to all the opportunities that the new day willingly affords us.

Let me end with an inspirational story about the little girl in the Starfish Story:

A man was walking on the beach one early morning and saw that thousands upon thousands of starfish had washed up on the beach the night before, dying due to the early morning sun and dry sandy beach. A bit in the distance he looked ahead and saw a young girl throwing starfish, one at a time, back into the ocean. The man got a bit farther ahead and yelled to the girl: "what are you doing?" The young girl looked back and answered: "I'm trying to save the starfish!" The man was confused and irritated: "You foolish girl! There are hundreds of thousands of starfish on the beach; surely you understand that one little girl cannot make a difference!" The young girl stopped in her tracks. Tears filled her eyes. She then looked down in her hand at the single starfish she was holding, and chucked it with all her might, back into the ocean. "But to that one...” the girl smiled through her tears at the man, "I made a difference to that one!"

By Beatrize

The author belongs to the band of working women who juggle home and career. Her success, according to her, is largely due to her overly-supportive hubby. She’s also a mom to a budding teen-lady and a man trapped in a boy’s eight-and-a-half-year-old body. She dabbles into writing (once in a while) in a lame attempt to balance her right and left brain.

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