the five people you meet in heaven

I just finished reading the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom. I really enjoyed it. It was a very fast read (I read the whole book last night and this morning) and I found it fascinating how the lives of the characters weaved together in unexpected ways. If you liked the movies A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, you would enjoy this book. I don't want to give too much away about the story but here's what it says on the inner cover:

Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his - and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever. One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life.

I've definitely wondered before how the world (and the lives of people in it) would be different if I had never been born. I wonder what impact (if any) I've had on people. Sometimes it's obvious but often it's not. I wonder who the five people I'd meet in heaven would be and what they would tell me. I also wonder why we don't tell each other these things during our time on Earth. As people touch our lives in large and small ways, why don't we take the time to tell them the difference they've made in our lives? Perhaps we take their presence for granted. Perhaps we're too busy and assume we'll have plenty of time to thank them later. But life is unpredictable. We might lose that opportunity. So we have to seize it each day, each moment someone touches our life for the better.