Honest, I was all set to go on a tear. Then I happened to be standing in Mark-my-unindicted-co-conspirator's cube when one of his crew came over with a question. The question had do to with handling some data elements in the Fetal Death system he's working on for the Vital Records Department. He had in his hand a fetal death certificate, which I could not help but look at. It was from two weeks ago.
In that terse way of all state forms, it spelled out the death of an infant boy during delivery --"probable asphyxia due to accident with cord" -- on the 27th. It listed all of the particulars of the mother and father, the mortal stats of the fetus, that an autopsy had been performed, and then progressed down through the method of disposition (burial), collecting signatures along the way from the Doctor who pronounced the child dead to the Funeral Director who oversaw his burial, to Hartford's Town and City Clerk who recorded the certificate in his ledger.
I have dug graves for infants. I have helped lower the tiny concrete box into the ground. I have seen the way the parents look -- like life itself has been ripped out of them. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.
