pink peonies

Every December, I think about pink peonies. Not because it's a flower that blooms in December (they actually bloom in late Spring), but because of what they signify. In Chinese culture, peonies signify wealth and prosperity. In other words, becoming super successful and having riches beyond measures. With the new year around the corner during the month of December, it makes (okay enough) sense that anyone would think about this symbol of success. It's the optimistic possibility of new wealth and prosperity in the new year with New Year's resolutions and hopefully unbroken promises. My extended family would even sometimes have pink peonies around the new year in feeble attempts to bring a little of this "wealth and prosperity" into our homes for the future. But, now when I think of pink peonies, I think of death. I want to apologize for the sudden morbid shift, but that's just what death is... Death. Is. Sudden.

My friend passed away on December 15, 2020. He liked any pink flowers but, peonies were his favorite. At the time, I was a second year in college in the midst of the COVID pandemic. He was someone that I had known since high school through some other mutual friends. The way I found out about his death was through an Instagram post that another mutual friend (his friend, my acquaintance) had posted reminiscing about their relationship and good times they had. I remember calling all of our other mutual friends, unbelieving that he had truly passed and attempting to find any alternatives to the situation. These phone calls ended up being a lot of the way our other friends had found out about his death. He had suffered major injuries from a car accident and died from cardiac arrest as a 20 year old (born April 6, 2000), with his whole life ahead of him. The average life span of a human being is 72.98 years. 20 year olds shouldn't die. 20 year olds shouldn't die even when they do like to mod their car and drive a little faster than the speed limit. This is when I also realized that death not only is sudden, but it's also offensive. Death spares no one, no matter how wealthy and prosperous you are.

As someone who's worked in the Emergency Room as a scribe for the past year, I've had my share of brushes with death - with patients who passed. The first patient who I saw pass in front of me was a gunshot victim who drove himself from the scene of the crime to the hospital. As a scribe, I'm responsible for all charting within Epic. This mainly includes the history of present illness ( the story of the illness or injury), review of symptoms (the symptoms a patient does or does not have), the physical exam, and any additional orders the healthcare provider may have for a patient. After this first patient, I remember sitting in utter shock and numbness attempting to fill out the medical chart. Spoiler alert: I couldn't. Not because I was so emotional (maybe a sliver of this), but because I didn't have enough information to fill the chart out. I literally couldn't. I couldn't go back and ask for the patient's past medical history (and etc.) because the patient was dead. What was even more shocking was how my healthcare provider began playing "Photograph" by Ed Sheeran about 20 minutes after his passing. Needless to say, this song has also taken a new meaning for me too like pink peonies...

The second patient was a male who had passed of a massive pulmonary embolism. In the words of Mayo Clinic, "a pulmonary embolism (PE) occurs when a blood clot gets stuck in an artery in the lung, blocking blood flow to part of the lung." The mortality rate of a PE with resuscitation is about 65 percent. In other words, more than half of the time, a massive PE (with resuscitation) is a death sentence. With this specific patient, he had undergone resuscitation for 52 minutes and was maxed out on medication before calling time of death. I remember that as resuscitation was being stopped, one nurse in the room yelled out to the patient that he was not alone. The sound of silence after was deafening.

The last patient I saw pass in front of me was a 4-year-old male. This kid passed from a single MVC, with his dad as a driver, mom as front passenger, and 2-year-old brother sitting in the back with him. The mom and brother had also suffered major injuries, while the dad remained unharmed - other than what I can only imagine to be a lifelong of guilt and pain. I cannot even begin to describe the screams of the grieving mother - blood curdling; from the very depths of her core; unrelenting; the purest form of rage, betrayal, and injustice.

Death is unjust. It gives no rhyme or reason. The only form of death being "fair" that I can possibly imagine is the death of a 100+ year old who's lived a happy and fulfilling life - but, even then, their death is still unfair to their grandkids who greatly misses them. My first experience of the offensiveness of death was with my friend Ryan. And as someone who wants to work in healthcare - even as someone who simply is a recipient of life (and the good and bad that comes with it) - , I'm sure that there will be many more offensive deaths to come. But as a Christian, these deaths - and newfound understanding about the true fragility of life - have given me new perspective and meaning on what life is and our place in it.

Don't get me wrong. I struggled with the idea of God after Ryan's death... like a lot. I struggled with how the God I believe in can be good and merciful, while living in a world full of unjust death, natural disasters, poverty, inequality, moral issues...the list goes on and on. I've tried to battle these struggles from the use of alcohol as a form of escapism, anger towards God, anger towards myself, and even suicidal ideation in wanting to be "free" from the pain and suffering of this world and in Heaven with God where "there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain" (Revelation 21:4). I couldn't wrap my head around how God picks and chooses who to go and who to stay on Earth. I thought that perhaps if Ryan had passed later on when he was older, that then he may have had the chance to hear the gospel and accepted Jesus, and maybe he could have been Christian and in Heaven now, rather than the alternative. If God is real, why does He let people die - or more so, die at an early age? Why does God let people die before having a chance to hear the gospel (same case for those in remote villages without any access to the outside world, much less Christianity)? Why does God let "good" people die? Why does God even create people who He knows isn't going to Heaven (on the basis that God is omniscient)?

Without getting too Christian jargon-y, these questions from a grief-riddled lens seems to insinuate the idea that God doesn't care about humanity - that God doesn't care about us. That instead, maybe, God just enjoys toying with us for his own entertainment. But the further couldn't be true. At the core of the Christian message, the gospel is the good news that God - who made us - sent his son Jesus down to Earth to live a perfect life, die in our place, and rise again so that we could be forgiven of our sins and have eternal life with God through faith in him. In other words, God loved us so much that Jesus died on the cross (despite never having sinned) for us, not just for Gandhi or Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. or any other seemingly perfect person - for you and me. This love runs so deep that even if you or I were the only person, God still would have sent Jesus to do the same thing. Perhaps this - Jesus's death - is the essence of the most unfair death there is. If we wanted fair from the beginning, Jesus wouldn't have died and we wouldn't even have the chance to go to Heaven. God does love us.

(If you find yourself asking "forgiven for what?", I encourage you to connect with me and ask about it!)

Okay, so if God is all-loving, then he shouldn't be all-knowing or all-powerful, right? This would be a contradiction, right? A loving God wouldn't knowingly let *insert any and all questions* ... right...? This is another concept that I had to research and wrestle with... it felt as though God was now contradicting himself. One concept that helped me to understand this (ever so slightly) was the concept of Molinism. I was referred to Dr. William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith explanation of Molinism - although fair warning, it is pretty dense. In my very poor attempt to briefly summarize molinism, its the idea that God logically knows what any person would do in a fully specified, freedom-permitting set of circumstances in which God might place him - prior to creating a world to His decree. God knows what we would freely do in any situation or circumstances and can therefore judge accordingly and justly. Just because we freely choose to "reject" God (under free will), this doesn't make God a malicious God when He chooses to judge in accordance to that. God can't force us to accept and love Him, as much as He wants us to - and He really does want us to. Even if a person dies old or young, God knows how they would have responded to the gospel and can judge in according to that.

Ultimately anything in regards to God's "perfect timing" is going to stir up emotions. Even as I write this now, the word "perfect" seems offensive and almost cruel to write - how could that 4-year-old's death be "perfect timing"? But, what would be "perfect timing" for someone's passing? After 70 years? After 100 years? So, would the "right" thing be to just guarantee that everyone gets 80 years, and then just pluck people off of the Earth exactly 80 years - 701280 hours - later? Would that be fair and "perfect"? Maybe it's something in between what we have now and that? Maybe every morally good action should add an extra 5, 10, 15, 20...etc extra years to our lives. I'm not sure what this answer would be. Even from a non-Christian standpoint, we know that life just doesn't work this way - regardless of God being in the picture of not. God never promised that we wouldn't die; in fact, he promised the opposite - that we will all die at one point or another. And this doesn't suddenly make Him bad when He delivers on that promise. That doesn't make Him an evil God, when a morally good person - or a 20 year old friend - suddenly dies, as much as we sometimes want to believe it...

There's still a lot that I'm still trying to understand myself about why God chose to do some things a certain way...and quite frankly, I may never fully understand these answers until I die and meet God myself, even as unsatisfactory and frustrating as that may feel. But in the meantime, I've learned to trust and rest in the fact that the God I serve is a good, loving, and merciful God - even admist grief and heartbreak.

With Ryan's death, I realized that life is fragile and death is sudden. But more importantly, I learned that the gospel is infinitely more urgent. Prior to Ryan's death, the only thing that felt truly urgent in my life were the next exams, the next deadlines, the next job offers...never the gospel, despite having grown up in the church. My purpose on Earth - as a Christian - is to share the gospel; nothing else matters. When I found out Ryan's death, I didn't care about his GPA or the possibility about his career; I cared about his soul and whether or not he was in Heaven. When I experienced the death of different patients, I didn't care about their social status or wealth; I cared about their souls and whether or not they were in Heaven. When my family and more friends pass in the future, I won't care about what they've accomplished in their lifetime; I'll care about their souls and whether or not they will be in Heaven. As Christians, sharing the gospel is urgent because death is sudden. As non-Christians, exploring for yourself if there even is a God or an afterlife to begin with (or what kind of afterlife that is) is urgent because death is sudden. Finding the truth about the realities of our souls is urgent. We're never guaranteed a tomorrow. I still regret to this day that I never even once thought about sharing the gospel with Ryan before he passed.

As Ryan's death anniversary (I hate this terminology, by the way) is coming up, I again find myself thinking of pink peonies. The flowers that signify wealth and prosperity now remind me of the importance and urgency of sharing the gospel. Death - although sudden, unjust, and offensive - also gives us a chance to stop and think about the fragility of life - and perhaps what happens afterwards.

So every once in a while, I hope that you too can stop and smell the ... pink peonies.