The only time we waste is what we spend thinking we are alone.

So says the Blue Man (a performance artist, but not one of the ones who tour the country these days) to protagonist Eddie toward the end of their conversation, the first one Eddie has after his arrival in heaven. Eddie died doing what he loved: protecting children (in this case, a very specific child) from the mechanical defects which after many years of use and occasional acts of negligence affect the performance of the rides at the amusement park where he works.

Or perhaps it would be too simplistic to say that Eddie loved the park. As he admits to the third person he meets, he often wished it had never been built. It was for the last 35 years or so of his life the source of the only meaning in it. Before that he saw it as a sort of trap that imprisoned and destroyed his father's spirit and then seemed to do the same to him. The park itself is a sort of character whose role in Eddie's life changes as he changes. Author Mitch Albom makes it fabulously alive and at the same time the source of ambiguous emotions.

Eddie's professional life, though he thought of it as somewhat undistinguished, was enviably stable. Other than working at the park Eddie only had two other jobs. He was a taxi driver the first few years after he was able to overcome the depression brought on by his war experiences. He fought in the Pacific front in World War II and was held prisoner by the Japanese for six months. On the day he escaped, he was overcome by what his fellow prisoners thought was a fit of insanity, requiring one of them to maim him permanently in order to take him out of the camp with them. The last person Eddie meets in the first part of his stay in heaven, reveals to him that he wasn't insane that day.

I suppose I had better not reveal any details about the other two people Eddie meets, because I want you to read this book. You only read one or two books a decade that actually reduce you to tears, and this was one of those for me. As with movies, there are a few books I would like to give six stars, if only epinions permitted it.

The most important thing I got out of the book is now the title of the review. The Blue Man was surely one of the loneliest of his generation, far lonelier than Eddie, who was happily married for 25 years. Yet this is his lesson to Eddie. One of the big issues in my life has been female companionship. Without it I have felt myself overcome by loneliness. My New Year's resolution is to repeat this lesson to myself every day, and I honestly think the need to be with someone, that has driven me to some rather bad decisions this year, will dissipate enough that I will be able to wait for God to spring the right one on me.