DOUG LAING
About 200 people shed tears of sadness and joy on Saturday as Mata Araipu of Flaxmere got her long-held wish to be buried with husband Tavaka after 38 years.
But funeral director Mane Neho says it was "a miracle" it ever happened after authorities said Mrs Araipu could not be
buried in her husband's grave in Waipukurau as had been the plan from the moment he died in 1969.
In a possibly unprecedented move after Mrs Araipu died last Thursday at the age of 82, her husband's remains were exhumed the next day, taken to Flaxmere to spend a night and Saturday's funeral service with his wife and family, before the joint interment at Mangaroa Cemetery.
Mr Neho was amazed by the speed with which authorities such as the Central Hawke's Bay District Council and the Ministry of Health moved to enable the joint burial to take place.
"It could have taken weeks, even months," he told Hawke's Bay Today at the graveside with family just after the burial early on Saturday afternoon. "And everyone would have had to come back again."
"I haven't heard of anything like this happening ever before," he said. "This was a miracle, and it was a beautiful funeral, for everyone who was here, seeing the husband and wife buried as was their wish, back together after so many years."
To family it had seemed a devastating tangle of bureaucratic red tape when they were first refused the chance to place the casket on top of that of Mr Araipu in Waipukurau, because there was no longer sufficient depth available in the double plot the couple had bought many years ago.
Ironically, the disinterment had begun on Friday when there was a change of heart which could have allowed the original burial plan to go ahead, but the family was well in the throes of organising for a service at St Peter's in Hastings, and the burial at Mangaroa.
Eldest son Nga Araipu said witnessing the uplifting of his father was "a truly humbling and spiritual experience," and added: "Who buries their father twice?"
