20 The Five People You Meet in Heaven Questions | Authors Trivia Quiz

Answer: Amy

Morton is one of the prisoners-of-war alongside Eddie during the Second World War in the Pacific. Dominguez worked alongside Eddie in the funfair and is the author's connection to the present. Marguerite was Eddie's late wife whom he loved and cherished greatly.
Eddie is the protagonist of this story and it was he who died within the first few chapters, and it is his life that is to be explained before he can enter Heaven.
Amy is the young girl whom Eddie tries to save, causing his own death.

Answer: Joseph Corvelzchik

The Blue Man had been a member of the freak show at the Funfair when Eddie was a small boy. Emile and Mickey appear later in the story.

Answer: No life is a waste

The Blue Man tells Eddie "The only time that we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone". Because of Eddie the Blue Man died. As a young boy Eddie had run out into the road to retrieve his baseball forcing the car that the Blue Man was driving to swerve, frightening him to the point that he has a heart attack and dies. Eddie did not know that, by his inadvertent action, a man had died.

Answer: Up a tree

The Captain appeared to Eddie in a tree smoking a cigarette and complaining that with all the injections he had received before going to war still he ended up dead.

Answer: A coal mine

Eddie, his Captain, and some of his squad were sent to a coal mine in the Philippines where the conditions were horrendous and they were treated like slaves.

Answer: The Captain

The Captain, and one of the surviving squad members, tried to stop Eddie entering the burning building and had to shoot Eddie in the leg to stop what looked like Eddie's suicide attempt. However what the Captain, and the other squad member, didn't know was Eddie thought he had seen someone moving in the building and was trying to get them out.
Eddie had a limp from then on until he died and was not happy with the Captain for shooting him.

Answer: Stepped on a landmine

After escaping the mine the survivors had stolen a truck and drove away. Upon coming to a closed gate the Captain got out of the truck to check for enemy activity and to open the gate. Ordering his men to stay in the truck he stated that he would check the road ahead for any enemy soldiers.

As he walked down the road he stepped on a landmine, detonating it, and dying. Eddie at the time was unconscious in the truck and therefore never knew how the Captain died.

Answer: Sacrifice is a part of life

"Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices, Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of a sick father."

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're passing it on to someone else."

The Captain sacrificed his life so that his squad could stay alive and go home; he had kept his promise to not leave them behind.

Answer: The funfair at the pier

Ruby Pier is where the funfair is located. The pier was named after Ruby by her husband Emile when he built the funfair for her. It is at the funfair, at Ruby Pier, that Eddie works and dies.

Answer: Eddie's father's best friend Mickey tried to rape Eddie's mother

On returning from work Eddie's father caught Mickey attempting to rape his wife. Mickey had been drinking heavily after having been fired from his job at the funfair. Eddie's father chased Mickey to the end of the pier where Mickey, drunkenly, fell off the pier. Eddie's father jumped in and rescued Mickey, dragging him to shore.

He was 56 years of age then and the sea took its toll on him and he developed pneumonia and was taken to hospital.

Answer: Forgiveness

"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."
"no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed from it."

Ruby showed Eddie that to move forward to Heaven he had to forgive his father for the things he had done.

Answer: In a world full of weddings

Marguerite always loved weddings and when she passed away she chose a place where weddings occurred all the time. All she had to do was open a door and step through the doorway and she would be amongst a wedding party. These weddings came from all over the world, from all religious traditions and from all cultures.

Answer: A bottle of old Harpers whiskey

While driving to meet Eddie at the funfair Marguerite's car was hit by a whiskey bottle dropped from an overpass by one of two drunken teenagers. The bottle hit her windscreen causing her to career into the concrete divider. She suffered from a lacerated liver and a broken arm before losing consciousness.

Answer: A tumour on the brain

About three years after the car accident Eddie finds Marguerite unconscious on the kitchen floor. The doctors' diagnosis is a tumour on the brain and she is told to go home and "put her affairs in order."

Answer: Lost love is still love

Marguerite had died at 47 years of age and Eddie was very angry at her passing. Marguerite explains that although she had passed away she never left Eddie. "Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around the dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.
Life has to end, love doesn't."

Even in heaven Marguerite could feel that Eddie still loved her.

Answer: Tala

Tala is a young Filipino girl whom Eddie does not remember ever meeting. She sits on a boulder beckoning him to her while children play around her.

Answer: "You burn me"

During the escape from the mine Eddie and his squad had torched the buildings surrounding the mine. Eddie had seen something move in the building that he had set on fire. Before he entered the burning building he was shot by the Captain and placed in the truck and taken away. What Eddie, and the others, didn't know was that there was a little girl, Tala, in the burning building and it was she who Eddie thought he saw move. Tala perished in that fire.

Answer: To wash her

Eddie washes her in the water. As he washes her the disfiguring burns that cover her body are washed away. Before that he had made her a dog from pipe cleaners, a party trick of his, but she did not ask him to do it.

Answer: Eddie made up for Tala's death by working at the funfair

By being the maintenance man at the funfair for most of his adult life Eddie had atoned for Tal's death even though he did not know he was doing that.
"Children," she said. "You keep them safe. You make good for me."

Answer: "The little girl at the pier. Did I save her?"

Eddie died trying to save the life of a young girl at the funfair, Amy. He remembers trying to pull her out of the way of a falling cart. Tala tells him the truth.

"Did I pull her out of the way?"
Tala shook her head. "No pull."
Eddie shivered. His head dropped. So there it was. The end of his story.
"Push," Tala said.
He looked up. "Push?"
"Push her legs. No pull. You push. Big thing fall. You keep her safe."
Eddie shuts his eyes in denial. "But I felt her hands," he said. "It's the only thing I remember. I couldn't have pushed her. I felt her hands."
"Not her hands," she said "Those were my hands. I bring you to heaven. Keep you safe."