Tears flow as baby Moses is buried

EVA BRADLEY
It was the type of day that makes Hawke's Bay famous: Blue skies, a light breeze and the sun beating down relentlessly. The only thing to mar the perfection was the sight of a small white coffin, two feet long, sitting alone above an empty grave.
No mother standing nearby weeping, no father to support her and not a single family member to say "I remember, I was there".
But Baby Moses, left dumped and unclaimed in a Heretaunga Street garden last week, found a new family at his funeral yesterday at the Hastings Cemetery in Orchard Road.
Before the short, Christian service, a small cluster of strangers gathered in the shade around his grave and the numbers soon swelled to about 100.
"If he has to wait in the hot sun for this, so will we," said a Maori woman as she pushed her family forward to the graveside. Others soon followed.
"We are the baby's family now," said Katrina Mariota as she encouraged her five young children to each kiss a rose and leave it beside the coffin.
"Spiritually, that is how we see it. It's important for family to be here and it's just how we are. This little boy will be watching over his mum and dad now. They need his support."
But if Moses' mum or dad were there yesterday, no one knew. Un-uniformed police monitored the fringes of the crowd and a video camera recorded proceedings in the hope that someone - anyone - might be identified.
Nine days after the body was found in long grass at the rear of the Christian Community Movement for Christian Renewal in Heretaunga Street, the trail is growing cold.
"We always live in hope but as time goes on it's always harder to find someone," reflected inquiry head, Detective Luke Shadbolt. With two young children of his own, this case has been harder than most.
"It's always sad to see a young life cast away," he said.
Hard, too, to be the person elected to lower young Moses into his grave. Feather-light, the sight of the small coffin disappearing prompted fresh tears in an emotional service, and an impromptu Maori waiata sung by many of the gathered women added to the sombre mood.
"It's difficult to know how to say good afternoon to you all," Father Bill Chapman said to the congregation. "This service is about closure, but sadly that can only truly come about when we have the mother come forward and let us unburden some of the pain from her."
After a short service and blessing, the congregation were invited to come forward and say goodbye. People of every race and age responded, but most heart-wrenching was the sight of very young children dropping flowers into the grave, the funeral perhaps the first time they had been told about death.
And if attending the funeral of an abandoned, two-day-old baby was difficult, walking away from it was even harder. Maryanne Purcell remained a lonely figure beside the grave as it was filled in.
"I just wanted to be here after the media circus was over. I just imagine that baby left alive to die in the burning sun and I feel it in my heart and my stomach," she said, wiping away tears.
Along with the teddy bears, gifts wrapped in Christmas paper and posies of flowers lie little notes for Moses: "Love from a mother who has lost a child and knows of the pain and sorrow," says one. "If I had known you, I would have taken you into my heart and open arms."
By mid-afternoon, baby Moses was left alone for the second time in as many weeks, gone but not forgotten.