And once again with kindness

The Herald reports:

A distraught Invercargill mum was forced to kneel down in mud and kiss her son goodbye through an unzipped body bag after he died in the first week of lockdown.

Police held up a blanket so neighbours could not see Angela clutching onto her 18-year-old son Brody, with tears streaming down her face, not wanting to let go.

It would be the last time she saw her youngest child – because of level 4 Covid-19 restrictions, funerals were banned. …

On the morning of Saturday, March 28 – day three of lockdown – Warren found his son. He is suspected to have taken his own life.

“He was our world. We were very close. Finding him like that, that’s what I see when I go to bed at night,” Warren said.

Brody left a note but his parents haven’t been able to read it because police took it for forensic examination.

The teenager had two brothers – he was extremely close with both. His 23-year-old brother lives about 5km away and had to say goodbye to Brody via Facetime.

His 26-year-old brother lives in Wellington. “He’s just pretending like it hasn’t happened until he’s able to come down.”

Sharron Hanley, funeral director and owner of MacDonald and Weston, received a call from police that morning to transfer Brody to a funeral home.

She described the ordeal as the most horrendous she had ever seen in 20 years of work.

“I have never seen anything so horrible, it was really really awful and it’s just so wrong what this family have been through.” …

Again common sense out the window. Australia has allowed funerals, limiting them to ten people. Their public health outcomes have been as good or better than Australia’s. So hundreds of people have been denied a funeral in New Zealand because of our inflexible inhumane approach.