Dead

Dead.  I have avoided this word.  I remember sitting in my hospital bed staring at the clock for hours waiting to call someone after Quinn’s arrival.  It would be my sister first.  It felt like an eternity that I was lying there waiting for the world to awaken so I didn’t have to sit with this information alone.  Quinn arrived at 3:38am and I got through to my sister around 8am.  When she picked up, I couldn’t say the word.  Instead, I said, “We lost her.”  I remember being aware of my choice of words in that moment.  I couldn’t say “dead.”  It was such a harsh word with an ugly connotation.  “Lost” was softer and seemed to fit the innocence and beauty of my baby girl more adequately. 

Only in the last few days have I begun to come to grips with the word dead.  Not aloud yet, but in my head and writing.  Sugarcoating her loss with a softer word does not help anything and does not bring her back.  She is dead.  It is true, according to Webster’s dictionary, that she is “no longer living” and “deprived of life.”  Now the harsh connotation that comes with the word fits.  It is an ugly, awful, and harsh word that describes an ugly, awful, and harsh tragedy.  The dagger that stabs my heart when I yearn and ache for her is brutal and painful.  Her death was and is so sad.  Quinn is dead.