Sacrifice

The bills are rolling in.

First there was the bill from the ultrasound. The dead baby ultrasound. Then there was the pathology bill. The one for the examination of the placenta of the dead baby. Yesterday it was the bill from the obstetrician. For the delivery of the dead baby. Everyone wants payment for services rendered. And I truly can't imagine anything I'd resent paying for more than any of the above.

Oh, well, there was my son's cremation. Fifty dollars to cremate a five pound baby. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 to cremate my father. M. stared at the $50 bill and then asked, sarcastically, "What? Do they charge by the pound?"

The injustices don't seem to end.

I recently discovered that, although we were required to fill out all the paperwork for William's death certificate, he will not be issued a birth certificate. According to the government, he was never born. He never lived. All those kicks and rolls and hiccups inside of me... what? Never happened? I imagined them? I imagined him?

Apparently, it's a pro-choice/pro-life issue. If a state issued a birth certificate for a 39-week-old "fetus" - they might have to issue a "birth" certificate for a 10-week-old one. You can imagine the disaster of an argument that might make, I'm sure.

So William has to pay for someone else's political argument. He is their sacrifice. Sweet, perfect baby, most certainly "alive" only twelve hours before his birth, perhaps twenty-four. 

So instead of being issued a birth certificate, I had to pay for two - a stillbirth certificate (the state's consolation - I'm lucky to live in a place that offers one as most don't) and a death certificate.

The list of horrors we've had to pay for over the last six weeks, the cost of my son's death,  just keep mounting.

And I'd give every damned penny I have or will ever have again, just to have him back.