Why?

Why is a big question. And it's one I don't like to ask. Because there aren't any answers on this side of Heaven.

Why did G die? Why did he have ARVD? Why was he abused? Why did everything have to be so hard? Why, why, why?

It's a question I shove down a lot. Trying to not look at why. Paul David Trip in his New Morning Mercies devotional said that we cannot find peace from trying to understand life but trusting in the one who understands it. That is true. Asking why and trying to understand our journey has never brought me peace.

But today I was reading back over our blog. I'm on Oct. 20, 2010 - just over 4 years from G's electrical storm in college and (though we don't know it at the time) just over a month before his life-saving heart transplant.

And things are looking bleak. Really, really bleak. But eerily familiar.

In the months leading up to (what we didn't know would be) his death, I remember telling the transplant coordinator that it felt like the year before his transplant all over again. Emergency room visit, ablations, lots of tests, lots of confusion. As I read back over the words we wrote in 2010 I can see clearly what I couldn't see then. He was dying again. He needed a new heart. Things were desperate in the fall of 2020 but no one was acting on it.

Why? Why didn't they take it seriously? Why did they pass of his symptoms? Why so much conversation behind closed doors and so little action? Why not admit him to the hospital? Why not remember that he was 35 and young and had a child and a future ahead of him? Was it his weight? Did they view him as non-complaint? My heart screams - WHY DIDN"T THEY CARE? WHY DIDN"T THEY LISTEN? WHY WERE WE SO ALONE??

If. If I could go back. Make them listen. Advocate harder. Refuse to leave! Demand to talk to a doctor. Be more forceful. Would it change anything?

Maybe it would have led to more procedures, more tests and more time in the hospital away from us during COVID without P being able to visit. G would've hated that. Maybe he would've died in the hospital instead of at home by the Christmas tree. He would've hated that too. Maybe he would've felt pressure to do what he couldn't do - endure more.

No, I doubt the outcome would have changed but the path would have. And not in a good way. Maybe we could've fought harder and had more answers. But maybe answers aren't all they are cracked up to be. Maybe God knows why and protected us from what we could not endure. Maybe things went exactly as they were supposed to. Maybe I don't need to know why.