Well my next guest is a special friend
who has appeared on this show numerous times.
He's here to talk about his latest novel,
The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
which is in stores today.
Please welcome Mitch Albom.
(upbeat music)
(audience cheering)
How are you doing?
Good how you doing?
Good to see you. Good to see you.
Thanks for having me on.
Alright how are you? I'm good.
Well you've been busy.
This is ah,
this is really amazing.
Mitch has written a new book,
The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
which is a sequel right.
This is a sequel to The Five People You Meet
in Heaven. Right.
And I know what it is about but please explain
so the viewers know.
So the Five People You Meet in Heaven
was my first novel and it was pretty popular.
You think? And it concerned
an old man named Eddie who dies trying to save a little girl
from an accident at an amusement park.
And he goes to push her out of the way
and this cart lands on him
and he dies not knowing
if he saved her.
He goes to heaven and he finds out that
the first stage of heaven is actually you might five people
from your life who you may remember
or you may not remember.
And each one them sort of shows you a moment
that you changed them forever
and they change you forever.
And he keeps asking did I save
the little girl was my life a big waste?
And at the end he gets to find out this life
that he thought was a big nothing
actually touched all kindS of people
and in all kinds of ways
which is what I believe about all of our lives.
Right and Jon Voight played Eddie
in the movie. In the move yeah.
That was made. Yeah.
And which was also a huge success.
How much was this current book influenced
by the last 15 years of your life?
Well quite a bit.
I mean ever since that book
I lost my Mom,
I lost my Dad and I lost a little girl
that we raised as our daughter,
one of our orphans from an orphanage I operate in Haiti.
And so heaven was kind of on my mind.
That's Chika right there. Right.
And so I thought well this is a good time
to revisit this and people have been asking me
ever since the Five People You Meet in Heaven came out
what happened to the little girl?
Okay we know Eddie went to heaven what happened
to this little girl that he saved?
So I thought that this might be
a good time to revisit it.
Yeah and we've been looking at pictures behind you
there of Chika.
Tell us a little bit about Chika.
I operate an orphanage in Haiti.
I'm there very month.
We have 47 kids.
Chika was one of our kids.
At age five she developed a very serious brain tumor,
the MRI came back in Haiti
saying there's no one in Haiti
who can do anything about this.
So we brought her up and spent the next two years
she was basically our daughter
and we traveled around the world trying to save her.
And ultimately she succumbed to the tumor
but not before changing all kinds of lives
especially mine and my wife's.
She was a doll,
she was bossy and she was independent
and she was fiery and she never once complained.
She danced and walked around
and never once complained about the situation
she was in.
I'm not sure she even knew.
But she got to have a mother and father
for at least a few years of her life
and we got to have a daughter.
And I don't look at it as we lost a child
I look at it as we were given one.
Yeah.
(audience applauding)
Now in both books the main characters
are taught lessons by children.
Well we say "out of the mouths of babes"
but talk about
how and why you use that device.
Well I think children probably teach us more
about ourselves than anything.
And this particular book
not surprisingly after you've heard what I just said.
Annie who grows up,
in this book the little girl grows up
she gets married and on the morning
after her wedding she's in a balloon,
one of those balloon rides at sunrise
and something goes terribly wrong.
And she dies trying to save her new husband.
She goes to heaven and meets five people
one of whom is Eddie from the past.
But along the way she lost a child
when she was younger as we did
and she finds out what happened to that child.
And I think anyone who has lost a child
always wonders are they in heaven,
will we see them again,
can we talk to them again.
I remember Chika one time
when she couldn't walk anymore towards the end,
we were sitting,
and we were coloring and I looked at my watch
and said "Oh my God I've got to go."
And she said, "No, no you have to stay here and color."
And I was carrying her from place to place
at that time and she said,
"No Chika I gotta go it's my work."
And she said, "Well I have to play."
And I said "I know but this is my job."
And she said, "No it isn't,
your job is carrying me."
And of course
like you say "Out of the mouths of babes" that is our job.
Exactly. Really that's our job
is to take care of children
and those who can't take care of themselves.
People cannot read this book
or any of the others
but certainly The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
and not come away with any other reaction
than feeling good and reevaluating
what they focus on
and what their priorities are in life.
We go through life
with all of these questions.
Eddie went through life saying I don't matter,
nothing matters, I'm a nobody.
Annie goes through life thinking I keep making mistakes,
I keep making mistakes.
If heaven is really the blessed place
that we all believe that it is
then it seems to me when we get there
one of the things that's gonna happen is we're gonna get
everything explained to us.
You might have thought that wasn't working out
but here's the reason.
You might have thought you didn't
do anything there,
but look at all these different people you touched.
And I would think that that would be
a pretty good way to begin heaven.
Yeah. And that's why
I imagined it that way. Yeah Exactly.