The funeral was Wednesday evening. I rode the bus home from school but my parents forgot to come to the driveway, so the driver wouldn’t let me get off. Later, they apologized. My mother had been in the shower, and my father was working on a photo board for the service.

The coffin was white and gold and I watched as they lowered it into the December earth. Later I would dream of him waking up and worry what he would do without us. I worried about that more than what we would do without him.

The day before my brother died we had a party. It was his birthday and my mother made a cake that looked like a train, with four little cars. My grandmother had sewn a family of frogs from old fabric scraps, stuffing them with dry beans. There was a toy tractor, cold metal that fit in your hand and a steering wheel you could spin with a finger. In the video it’s just us: mother, father, three children. He was only three and he was all ours. 

Afterward, people sent us cards and flowers and fruit. My father let me keep a vase of flowers in my room. My mother gave me a necklace with an oblong pearl pendant. Someone had given it to her, but it wasn’t her style. I imagined that some of my brother was in it—his soul, maybe, and if I twirled the pendant the right way at the right time of the day, I could bring him back.

I don’t know why my brother died. People always ask, maybe because this is the easiest way to talk about it. They seem skeptical when I say that I don’t know. It says pneumonia on the death certificate, but later, the doctors told my parents that it couldn’t have been pneumonia, that they did chest compressions and if it had been pneumonia his lungs would have been rigid.

There was some sort of investigation. This is apparently standard procedure after the death of a child, but it dragged on and on until my parents finally asked why it was taking so long. After that, my mother says it was wrapped up within 48 hours; they said they were done but the report was sparse. There was no new information.