Grieving wife denied chance to wipe dead husband's face clean

Utufiti Taunoa died suddenly on the rugby field and his widow was not allowed to touch him in the morgue.

She was 15, he was 16 when they first met on a Cook Strait ferry. They were in love, they had four children, they had big plans.

But Isla Taunoa was denied the last thing she could do for her husband, Utufiti Taunoa.

That was to wipe away the dirt that covered his face as he lay in a Wellington morgue.

Utufiti Taunoa dropped on the rugby field, felled by a massive heart attack, as he played a tribute game for Jerry Collins for Norths on June 13, 2015.

Isla, who was home studying for her final nursing exams at their Porirua home, was called to the sports ground, the team manager telling her "he's not in a good way".

Fiti, as he was known, was 43and a cleaning supervisor at Wellington Hospital.

He died in an ambulance on his way to Wellington Hospital.

Isla didn't get to say goodbye to the man she described as the love of her life. They had no last moments together.

But what really angers her is that after he had died, she asked to be allowed to be with him, to touch him, and she was told she couldn't.

She was allowed to see him, through a window at the morgue. What she saw was her still muddy husband, in his rugby gear, lying with plastic up to his chest.

"All I could see was my husband behind that perspex, and his face was all dirty because he goes hard out when he plays rugby, he goes for gold. He loved his rugby and loved to tackle," she said.

"He was still in his rugby gear, they'd cut his top open. But all I could think of was his face was just dirty and he had blood coming out his nose."

"I couldn't even clean his face. He was a proud Samoan matai and he wouldn't have wanted to be seen like that. I couldn't even do that for him," she said.

"It would have been good closure, the beginning of a good closure. It was just terrible to see him lying behind that big perspex window with his face covered in dirt and blood running down his nose, in his dirty rugby stuff."

Police had told Isla she wasn't allowed in to wipe away the dirt because of rules which stated that because of the way he died, the coroner had to give permission for her to go in.

Fiti was Samoan, Isla is Ngati Kuia and Ngati Porou. Culturally, it was incredibly important that she be with her husband.