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She was only six when the funeral homes started sending us advertisements, all competing with each other to be the best, to win her business. To win our business, more like; six is hardly old enough to understand what's going on. It's not old enough to understand why everyone is covering their mouths with their hands and failing to hold back tears when you walk into the room, or old enough to understand why people begin to outright sob when you start talking about what you want to be when you grow up. Once it was a doctor, before that it was a fairy princess, but right now it's a policewoman.

And of course all the children have heard about the funeral homes. Cold, nasty, make their business in knowing when people are going to die. Not how, as far as anyone can tell, just...when. A lot of kids have had relatives—great-aunts, great-uncles, maybe great-grandparents—start getting advertisements, maybe been shown them to know what to look out for, but not Anita. She doesn't have much of a family. Just us and her grandparents on my side of the family. John doesn't speak to his parents, except when he has to, so Anita's only met them once or twice, and both of us are only children, just like Anita. But of course John's parents will be coming to her funeral. Everyone will be.

We did manage to decide on a funeral home. There were only two advertisements that looked suitable for children—there never used to be funeral homes like that, not in the old days, but now that the funeral homes know in advance when a death will occur, some of them made themselves…happy. Cheerful. Streamers, balloons, so it's almost like a party.

Very depressing.

Today we found out what kind of flowers Anita wants at her funeral, although of course we didn't ask her that outright. Purple ones are her favorites, she says. What kind of flowers are purple? Lilies? Lilacs? I've never had to plan a funeral before, although of course I've been to plenty of them. And I never thought I'd be planning my own daughter's funeral, not before my own or before one of my parents'.

I wonder how she'll die. I wonder if she'll be comfortable.

Anita asked me earlier why everyone was acting so strangely around her. It's funny, because I thought she'd be too young to really notice. I thought she'd appreciate the extra attention, the time off from school, but no; she misses her friends. So I told her she could go back to school on Monday.

The funeral is on Sunday.

I took Anita to the funeral home for the first time, since the funeral'll be tomorrow. She adores it. We went in and looked at the flowers that had been picked out, the purple streamers adorning the walls, the purple balloons tied to chairs. She thought it was beautiful, and amazing that everything was her favorite color. She asked me if we could live there forever, and got worried when I couldn't hold back my sobs.

Everyone was at the funeral. My parents, John's parents, Anita's teacher and most of her classmates and their parents. After the service, the children played with Anita outside on the merry-go-round while John and I wept with our friends and family.

That's when we heard the screams, and raced outside to see what was going on.

Anita was lying on the ground with one arm twisted behind her back. Her face was pale, and she wasn't moving. I picked her up, screamed her name, but she didn't respond, and rubbing her back, I could feel blood. Her classmates explained to me later that she'd spun too hard on the merry-go-round, that she'd fallen off and fell both on her arm and on a sharp stick that had been jutting out of the ground.

And it makes you wonder, doesn't it? If we'd never had the funeral, then she never could have died, could she? But she would have anyway, because the funeral homes know about deaths…

Don't they?