Grieving Parents

Re “Mourning Baby With a Snapshot in Death,” July 5:

Over a year ago, my wife and I had a son, Nathan, three months premature and lost him after emergency surgery 15 days later. The staff in the neonatal ward of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center (where my wife also works as a CNA) were very supportive in our time of grief. The nurses took post-mortem pictures of our Nathan. We were given a 10-exposure, 35mm roll of film. They explained their policy of the pictures being part of the bereavement services and told us that we could do whatever we wanted with the roll. We were told that some parents will develop the film much later and some will destroy the film outright. But the decision to see the actual pictures is all theirs to make.

Although I took plenty of digital photos of our son during the oh-so-short 15 days of his life, I appreciated and saw the logic of the tactful foresight of the hospital personnel for those who may have not. We have the developed prints, which reside in a decorated wooden box along with other mementos of our son, to show our future children who may ask us, “Did I have a sister or brother before me?”

PETER ISAACSON

Hacienda Heights