Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1903, Kansallisgalleria, “By the River of Tuonela,” study for the Jusélius Mausoleum frescoes, showing the mythical river where souls pass to the world of death
A year ago I received long-awaited news, the morning of April 26, 2024, that the woman who brought me into this world had died. She passed in the early morning hours in a hospital outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, the college community where she spent the majority of her later decades. She was 83 years old.
I now have her death certificate, which the state of Michigan legally cannot deny me by law, unlike my original birth certificate showing our mother-child relationship that is sealed by law and that I took decades fighting to obtain in 2016.
The importance of a death certificate
Death certificates have symbolic power, in addition to being legal documents. They also are not sealed vital records. I requested and obtained an original copy of my bio-mom’s death record in August 2024. I needed it as part of my process to apply for Finnish residency by family relations, which I submitted in March 2025.
This process took nearly half a year, because of delays getting all my vital records showing my family ties, through my bio-mom, to my Finnish relatives and my 100 percent ethnically Finnish bio-grandma, mother of my bio-mom. She is the daughter of my great grandparents, who immigrated to Michigan from Finland and settled with thousands of other Finnish immigrants in Hancock, Michigan.
Despite the lawbreaking by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS)* in initially not releasing additional copies of my birth record that I needed to apply to Finland for residency, I prevailed. One reason I applied for this status to Finland is the rapidly disintegrating democracy of my country and my own desire to embrace a country that cares for its people in ways we do not in my country of birth. …
See the full essay, “Marking time and the first anniversary of my bio-mom’s death,” on my website.