Dead

“Your daughter is dead.”

“Your daughter is dead. Your daughter is dead. Your daughter is dead.” My daughter is dead.

There had been many things happening the last couple of days, but they are all blurry in my mind. I can’t remember anything. I can’t distinguish anything in my ocean of thoughts and memories. All I know is that my daughter is dead. She passed away the day before yesterday. A Wednesday. I will never feel the same about Wednesdays now. Silly, as if it was “Wednesday” that took my daughter away from me. It was not.

My daughter is...

My daughter is...

My daughter was. My daughter was. Was? My daughter was 30 years old. Why was she? Why isn’t she? People her age should BE now, in the present. Not in the past. Why is my daughter a “was” and not an “is” today? It doesn’t make sense.

Why do people 30 years old pass away anyways? Cardiac arrest they said but what does that mean? What do they, actually, mean by that? What do you mean her heart stopped working? It can’t be possible. It just can’t. Also, if my daughter needed a different heart, doctors could’ve exchanged it with mine. I have lived more than enough, but my daughter just turned 30. She was supposed to live longer, or so I thought. So I thought.

My daughter had a crystal heart. I knew that, I knew it very well. She had the tiniest yet biggest heart, I found it out a July night when she asked me if she could sleep with the little dog we just adopted because he wouldn’t stop crying at night and he must have been scared. She slept with him until he stopped crying at night. I should have found ways to help her strengthen her heart, instead, I taught her to take good care of it and so my 30 years old daughter continued to have a 9 years old’s heart. Maybe that is why it stopped working. It must have gotten broken. This planet isn’t a place for such hearts.

Photography was taken by Madelaine Bustamante

Friday, January 21, 2022 at 8:30pm.