As Bright As Heaven

“Someone must be able to gaze on the breadth of what makes us mortal, yes? Someone has to.”

This quote illustrates the theme of Care as a Human Imperative, as Pauline insists that someone must bear witness to the human condition, even in its most painful moments. Pauline’s interest in working in the embalming room is partly a wish to confront death, but she also understands that the preparation is a form of care. She introduces the perspective that death is a natural part of life, a hard lesson she has learned from losing a child. Her children all, in some capacity, inherit this belief.

“So much has changed since Henry died. I hope she still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn’t think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn’t be here.”

Butterflies are introduced early as a symbol for what is beautiful but short-lived, a parallel to Henry, whose loss has deeply affected all the members of the family. Later in the book, butterflies will become an image that, for Willa, symbolizes the legacy of her mother.

“It’s not all bad, what happens in this room. I think it’s mostly good. Ugly is made pretty again. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Maggie’s curiosity is part of her character, and her wish to know and have things explained leads her to the embalming room, as much as a desire to be part of the mystery of the adult word. Her wish to fix things is a character trait that speaks to the novel’s discussion of the importance of compassion, connection, and care.

“I learned that in every culture in human history, the living have treated their dead with honor and respect, some even with adoration. There is something sacred about the body when the soul has left it, no matter which corner of the globe or how far back you look.”

Pauline’s sense of death as a companion is foreshadowing but also part of the novel’s argument that bright and dark, life and death, and loss and hope are always intertwined and that the ability to cling to the good gives meaning to life. She sees this ritual of care for the dead as a sacred act, part of the narrowing of the division between life and death that she likewise recognizes in her illness.

“Nothing is wrong with you, Polly. Your child died and your mother’s heart is healing the best way it can. The heart always does what it needs to do. Don’t you fret, now. Everything will be all right in time.”

This is the advice that Pauline wishes to hear from her mother, and ironically does not receive, as her mother began withdrawing from her in her hurt over Pauline’s move to Philadelphia. Pauline’s loss of a mother foreshadows the loss of the Bright girls’ mother, but this philosophy of Pauline’s—that the heart does what it must to heal—bears out in the later action.

“Bright Funeral Home had been a quiet, peaceful place for the most tender care of the dearly departed. […] It was a calm, respected place where life was honored and hence affirmed […] But now this place is like a terrible corner in someone’s nightmare.”

This moment starkly contrasts the original mission of the funeral home—to affirm life—with the dehumanizing toll of mass death. The care demonstrated for the deceased forms part of the novel’s discussion of care for others, but in the horror of the pandemic, that vanishes. Pauline’s imagery of a nightmare is a foreshadowing of her own illness.

“It’s as if Philadelphia has been cut in two like an apple, and one side looks just the way the inside of an apple should and the other side is dark and wormy and makes you gasp when you see it. That side isn’t an apple at all anymore but something sinister and wrong.”

Maggie’s perception of the street when she and Pauline deliver food to the sick reflects the shadow cast on the town by the flu pandemic, which is often described with images of illness and disfigurement. Maggie’s image of the alternate, poisoned-apple world is echoed later by Jamie’s description of his world being upended by the experience of war.

“I suddenly realize sometimes things aren’t simple. Sometimes you do a bad thing for good reasons. Sometimes you do a good thing for bad reasons.”

The question of whether a choice is good, right, or the best is debated throughout the book. Maggie tries to convince herself that she made the right choice in taking the baby, but the circumstances make her question her own motives. Pauline’s argument about the importance of considering others speaks to the novel’s prevailing themes about care.

“I am sure now that Death is not the enemy, but something else surely is. My companion has been suggesting to me month after month since Henry died that it spreads its reach with the tender embrace of an angel, not the talons of a demon. But I still don’t understand why.”

Pauline’s personification of death as a tender companion challenges traditional views and highlights her spiritual evolution. Pauline’s sense of communication with death explores her grieving process, but the loving images also reframe conventional fears about death. Pauline’s question of the identity of this enemy is left up the reader to deduce, one of several unanswerable questions the novel poses about the nature of life and humanity.

“He is, at this moment, our only thread of evidence that the entire world isn’t collapsing into itself in ruins. This child is perfect and beautiful and innocent and fully alive. In the middle of all the death surrounding us, he seems our last grip on life.”

This quote is a clear expression of the theme of resilience as necessary to survival, as Alex becomes a symbol of emotional anchoring amid chaos. The novel subtly balances loss and gain as both dramatic and thematic movement. A motif throughout is Alex, the baby whom Maggie brings to the family; he is one bright spot during the flu pandemic and proof that survival and joy are possible, even in the darkest times.

“I had no idea the gap between earth and heaven is so narrow, no wider than a jump over a brook. I’d always thought heaven was so far from the living.”

Bearing out the foreshadowing hinted at by her spectral companion, Pauline faces death but is not fearful. Her belief in the Christian concept of heaven brings solace, in keeping with the theme of interwoven light and dark, loss and beauty. Her image of the divide being small adds a poignant tone to the description of her passing and helps temper the tension in this chapter.

“He is the opposite of the war and the flue. He is sweet and beautiful and alive. Alex is the war and the flu and death all turned upside down.”

Maggie’s letter to Jamie about Alex expresses the images of hope and life that Alex poses for the Bright family in the midst of the loss of Pauline and Uncle Fred. Fittingly, Maggie writes of this symbol of aliveness within one of her letters, which are what will help keep Jamie alive.

“She says the flu wanted to make barbarians of us, to have us think life is not precious and the dead are not worthy of our kindest care. Our humanity is what made what happened to us so terrible. Without it, nothing matters. Nothing is awful. But nothing is amazing, either.”

Maggie’s reflection on Evelyn’s statement captures the novel’s message about humanity and the imperative of care, the compassion that makes us human. Valuing life is what makes the best of human experience possible, even though it is a source of pain. Both go together, which is the lesson that Pauline learned.

“Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That’s how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There’s always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That’s how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we’re still alive.”

This passage, Maggie’s reflection at the end of the war, is the novel’s most overt expression of its argument about survival and the necessity for movement, repair, and optimism. The enemy of life is not death, the novel posits, but despair; Maggie’s perspective, true to her nature, looks for ways to correct what is broken.

“I don’t know what would have become of us—of me—had we not had Alex during those first years when we were all learning how to live again. It was Alex who gave us reasons to get up in the morning, to sing silly songs and play games, to forget how the flu and the war had twisted every notion we had about the sacredness of life.”

Having Alex provides a motive for survival for the remaining Brights, speaking to the novel’s themes about resilience and emotional connection. Their attachment to him will also heighten the tension and conflict when his birth family is discovered and he stands to be taken away.

“It’s the only part of death we can control. The farewell.”

This quote distills the novel’s philosophy of grief into one line, directly linking the act of farewell to the theme of finding fulfillment in passion and purpose. Maggie, who takes over Pauline’s work helping to prepare the deceased for burial, also shares Pauline’s sense that this is a sacred task, not fearful or macabre but a kindness. Among the novel’s many unanswerable questions, one of them concerning the mechanism of death, the answers always come back to what humans can do in the face of it. Maggie sees her work as an act of service, helping families say goodbye.

“I’m speechless at the idea that all my life has been a journey to this moment when I make a decision that will change the course of my existence.”

This moment of reflection dramatizes the stakes of choice, a recurring motif that underscores how fragile yet potent each decision can be. Palmer’s proposal takes Maggie off guard and leads to this contemplation on choice. The suddenness, the consequences, and the sometimes-irrevocable nature of choices are all explored in various ways through the action and decisions made by the protagonists.

“It’s not that hard to do something you’re not supposed to if nobody thinks you’d ever even contemplate doing such a thing anyway.”

Willa’s observation reflects her sly intelligence and introduces a darker tone of agency. Meissner manages a different voice for all her narrators, and Willa’s voice at 14 is still more frank and direct than any of the others, even Maggie’s at 12. This reflects Willa’s self-centeredness and also her love of music and pleasure. While the other girls focus on helping others, Willa’s focus is on pleasing herself, another perspective on the themes of survival and joy.

“But underneath all these evidences of a roving life, I see in his gaze tiny traces of the man I met when I was young, before he went to war, before the flu killed people we loved, before he returned from the trenches a hollowed-out soul.”

In the middle of Part 2, as the Bright family are making their efforts to repair and move forward, Jamie’s return brings up memories of all the things they are trying to heal from. Jamie, too, is trying to heal, part of which means returning home. He becomes the symbol of the good things they had before the war and the flu. Despite Willa’s pessimism about how things have changed, Jamie’s return signals that some things can be restored. The contrast between “roving life” and “tiny traces” speaks to the tension between loss and memory.

“I hated who I was, who I had become. I hated what I had seen and what I had done. I didn’t want to be here where life had been beautiful. When I was in France, everything I believed to be true was turned on its head. It was like waking up every morning in an upside-down world where everything that had been sacred had become profane.”

Jamie’s description to Maggie of his experiences in war describes how he feels that they made him a different person. Jamie’s method of survival is a contrast to those taken by the Brights, who try to find the beautiful in what is still around them. His image of the inverted world resonates with other images of how Philadelphia was impacted by the flu, linking the war and the pandemic as combined disasters.

“We had wanted happiness for our lives. We’d pursued it the way everyone did after the flu and after the war, and we thought we’d caught it.”

The “we” of this passage includes not just Evelyn and her family but also Evelyn and Conrad, whom she is with during this moment. Evelyn reflects on how Alex was a source of joy to the Bright family in the midst of their tragedy, and she reflects on how Conrad had anticipated joy with his new wife, Sybil, only to lose her to illness.

“Love something long enough and true enough and fate will tear it right out of your hands if it chooses, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Willa’s blunt point of view is often self-serving, rationalizing her motives and reflecting her fatalistic. Willa’s efforts to capture joy and deal with what she lost provide an alternative perspective on the ways forward that Maggie and Evelyn choose.

“We only see a little bit of our stories at a time, and the hard parts remind us too harshly that we’re fragile and flawed. But it isn’t all hard. Your story isn’t all hard parts. Some of it is incredibly beautiful.”

Jamie uses the metaphor of life as a narrative to encourage Maggie to accept the hard parts—the conflicts—and the reality that characters—people—are flawed. However, he reminds her to embrace the beautiful as well. This is something that younger Maggie knew, believed, and wanted to tell Jamie, and now he is reminding her of that wisdom, emphasizing their connection.