Read the book “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”, it provided me with much details of the lessons and the life story of Eddie, the protagonist.

So there was this idea which the Captain brought up, what if we do not know what is sleep, when we lay down to sleep, we would thought that everything is over, that we would think that perhaps we will leave the world, and etc, only to find out that the next morning, live goes on, only that we have now something new to do, some more tasks to fulfill. “He has his yesterday.”

So the Captain spent his heaven trying to make sense of his yesterday, and tried to think what have his decision deprived Eddie of. All he asked for was forgiveness from Eddie, for it was his “laws”, his “duty”, his “responsibility” or “principle” to “leave no one behind”, thus he had to shoot Eddie.

Then, his third lesson was that he realized that he accomplished little without his harsh dad, so while he hated him, actually, the dad was training him in a harsh way, just like the short film, Eyrie.

Furthermore, he then understands that his dad was really marvelous, to be able to forgive his old friend, despite him betraying him, “your father acted on impulse, too, and while his first impulse was to kill, his final impulse was to keep a man alive.” He

Then there was this mini lesson, on silence. With no courage to speak up, “Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.”

His forth lesson, had this little part where Eddie asked his wife is she knows about him after she died, she replied, “I only remembered those while we’re together.” I find this so applicable, sometimes in romance, it is best to keep the best memories, and not care the rest of it, since it will only remind yourself with more pain and misery of loneliness, missing-ness.

Eddie wanted more time with her of course, but it’s not possible, just as in life at times we wanted more time spent with a person. Perhaps the song “I don’t wanna miss a thing” expresses this yearning best. “I could stay awake, just to hear you breathing.” Not being spooky, but sometimes, just to look at your loved ones, parents, partner, friends, children, being soundly asleep do give you a strange serenity, to watch the sunrays caress their faces, it possess some kind of wonderful warmth, that led you thinking that the world is great.

And then the various flashback of Eddie’s life, you could be how everything links up, even to his death by a lost key. This part is really literature-ish. Also, some expressions are simply beautiful, “It is never hard to act ordinary if you feel ordinary, and the paleness of surrender becomes the colour of Eddie’s days.” And also, “Eddie felt the emptiest kind of anger, a kind that circles in its cage.”