Farewell but not goodbye to dad's business

Raewyn Neho is emphatic that she couldn't have got her late father's funeral business up and running again without the help of whanau, but there's still one of his many roles she hasn't been able to fill.
"I still need a one-handed guitar player," she said this week as she tried to chill out after what had seemed one non-stop hectic time since Mane Neho died on October 5, aged 70.
She'd been home just a few weeks from a trip to the UK when it happened, suddenly.
Then followed the return home for final burial at Te Huruhi Marae, Awarua, in the Far North, where he had been born on August 29, 1939, his casket carried by the same vehicle in which he had carried so many others on their final journeys.
The procession was also a snapshot of his own journeys, traipsing from Kohupatiki Marae, to Te Aranga at Flaxmere, to Omahu and then other marae, arriving and leaving at varying hours, reaching the destination late, and with a fender-bender along the way.
Among the stops were the Mormon Temple he had helped build, as both a career bricklayer and a mormon, a devotion he shared with wife Ansie.
Amid the snow, the roads had opened to allow them through, but they were closed by the time everyone wanted to come home, and today his daughter muses he must have wanted them to have as much time as they needed, without having to rush back.
It was during the tangi that uncle Taka Walker popped the question in his own way, saying: "Look around, look at all these people ... "
"I said, I just do the books!" she said, but he said, tellingly: "We'll all help you."
When they returned, those who had worked with him asked her as well, but it was clear help would be needed. After all, Mane Neho often did almost everything he could to help others in their grieving moments, from making the arrangements through to singing and playing the guitar, one-handed, into the wee hours.
The mandatory hui followed, and with the blessing and tautoko of Jerry Hapuku, Pirihi and Wai Ruwhiu, Hori Lawrence, Sonny Horua, Sid Maaka, Des Tokona, John Kenrick, Nikki Hema and Ansie Lee-Taimona and daughter Harata - "and a few others" - Te Whanau o Mane Neho Funeral Services was on its way.
"We offer full funeral services with the cultural sensitivity that Mane brought to the people," the family says, determined to carry on the work of the career bricklayer who seemed right at home arranging funerals from the time he started about 10 years ago.
But the learning started back when he was raised by his grandmother, who was familiar with traditional Maori methods of farewelling the dead, dressed with herbs, and with the deceased sitting up on the marae. The new company was registered on November 25, but already the work was beginning, and by the end of December there had been seven funerals, most seeking the unique service, which had been available before.
"The first one," she said, "literally turned up at the house looking for Dad."