That's an unfortunate bug that wasn't really understood until after Village Sim was released. It's something the developers are aware of and are working on. In the meantime, depending upon how long it's been since your last HotSync, you could probably recover a backup of your savegame from your PC (since I assume you've already saved the game on your Palm after the "indicent"). If you need any help with recovering your savegame backup, please let me know and I'll be happy to help!

It can be risky to touch or drag a villager during burials, too. To prevent repeat occurrences of that bug, it's safest to exit the game immediately after deaths/burials and then launch it again. That "cleans up" memory and seems to help prevent disappearances.
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Barbara
Unicorn
Last Day of Work