Taking my own advice
So today I wrote out a big check to the Texas Vital Statistics Department of State Health Services and ordered 4 death certificates. My dad had 7 siblings–4 of them have died within the last 14 years. I have death certificates for their parents but I’d never gotten around to ordering them for my aunt and uncles. Since I wrote earlier this week about collecting health data from your family, I thought I’d better follow my own advice.
It’s easy to not take the time and trouble (and cashola) to collect documentation of events that happen within my own lifetime. Acquiring vital records has gotten a bit more difficult in this day of identity theft and terrorism threats. But I’ve been thinking more and more about getting these certificates so that I have a record of the official causes of death–and this was emphasized when I tried to fill out the family health form. I know my dad’s oldest brother had some sort of blood disorder, and supposedly it wasn’t leukemia. What was it? He had no children and his wife/my aunt is gone now too, so ordering the death certificate is the way to go–not to mention following good genealogical procedures–acquiring the actual death certificate to accompany the funeral folder and obituary and personal memory I have of Uncle “Scoops.”
The form was available at the website and could be filled in on my computer and then printed. Since these deaths were not 25 years old, I had to order them by mail rather than online, accompanied with a photocopy of a photo id. Thank god for good technology–I could go back and forth between my family database for birth and death dates and places, and I could scan in my drivers’ license along with printing out the forms and envelope and I am good to go.
I’d sort of forgotten the fun of the anticipation of receiving documents like this through the mail–I’ve gotten some strange looks from the non-genealogy folks when I was celebrating receiving a death certificate through the mail. 
I just hope the 4-6 week waiting period is the usual exaggeration.