Well, I was suddenly thrown into funeral arrangements, people, phone calls, food, cards, flowers, weeping, sleeping, trying to keep afloat.
But the first important thing was to get his body back. He had been taken to a funeral home in Gore, being nearest to where the accident happened. They had plans of taking his body to Invercargill for a postmortem investigation. So first thing the next morning, Mother's day. I was on the phone, to Gore funeral home. To the only coroner in NZ on duty that day. I explained that I didn't believe in cutting up bodies, and that the body had to remain still in the place where it lay for at least three days. Well I'll have to phone you back on what I decide. I talked to Shreik the Policeman at Riversdale who was on the job, he said he would do what he could for me.I wanted Liams body back in Dunedin with me. I also got in touch with Hope and Son Funeral directors, because they know what to do in these circumstances.It was later resolved that they would bring the body through to dunedin that day, to be taken to the hospital at 1.30pm.
Well now we were getting somewhere.
By this time the word was out and relations were arriving and suggesting this and that, but I knew exactly what I had to do and held on strongly to that. By 1.30 I was down at the hospital, meeting a brother-in-law there, but the body hadn't arrived and they wouldn't take us down anyway. Had to have a note from the police. This was their jurisdiction. We waited an hour, and max had had enough and went up to the house. I walked down to the police station, where they said he had just arrived at the hospital, and I was given the note. I took this back to the hospital and a policeman came and took me down to see Liams body. What a Mothers day present, the body of my dead boy. I just did healing on him and talked to him. I could see cuts on his face and hands, a large bruise on his chest, his hair clogged with blood. Oh poor boy so fragile and so dead.