KEY POINTS:
It seems incredible that a law change is needed to put an end to body snatching. Yet that seems to be precisely what is required, given that New Zealand has seen its third case of body snatching in the past year.
This time, it was the estranged daughter of a 76-year-old Hamilton woman who turned up at the local funeral home, just as Ivy Ngahooro's casket was being loaded into the hearse. Aided and abetted by four car loads of people, Joanne Bennett unloaded her mother and shoved her into the back of a four-wheel drive and made her way to a marae in Taumaranui, in direct violation of her mother's last wishes.
Bennett clearly didn't give a rat's arse about her mother in life, so I suppose it's no surprise that she cares little for her mother's wishes in death. But it seems outrageous that some embittered individual can simply ride roughshod over the rest of the family and, indeed, over the instructions of the deceased.
Ivy Ngahooro said she wanted to be buried in Hamilton with an Anglican-type service.
She did not want to be carted down country in the back of a four-wheel drive with a daughter she wasn't close to and shoved on a marae she didn't call home.
Ivy was not Maori, she'd merely married a Maori bloke, a chap she'd left in the 1970s. And while it's fabulous that Joanne Bennet is deeply connected to her tikanga, her mum wasn't.
It is deeply offensive for this woman to cloak herself in cultural sanctimony and claim a higher purpose. She's just a vengeful, breathtakingly self-centred woman, subverting tikanga Maori for her own selfish reasons.
Most of us who've given any thought to our send-offs know the way we would like to go. For some, it's small and intimate with the bare minimum of fuss; for A-type personalities like me, it's all the bells and whistles and 20 solid gold requiem hymns. But I guarantee none of us would like to have our corpse fought over and our family's shame played out in the media.
And while I don't envy the police their job in trying to mediate between warring families, the position is clear. The wishes of the deceased should be adhered to. And if Ivy Ngahooro wanted to be buried in Hamilton, then buried in Hamilton she should be.
An individual who is more arrogant, ignorant, aggressive and bullying should not be able to triumph over decent, responsible, compassionate people trying to do the best for the deceased.
The local police put a road block in place as Bennett and her motley crew headed south, but rather than taking Ivy's casket to where it should be, they called in a Maori liaison officer, had a roadside hui for an hour or so, then Bennett was allowed to carry on her merry way.
It's all very well and good having sensitive, new-age, law enforcers, but where are the tough guys when you need them? Still making their way back from the Ureweras?
Bennett has shown that when you are a swaggering bully, you can do what you like and no one will stop you. And that's the reason we've had so many of these unseemly cases. The bullies have been allowed to get away with it.
It's time to stop them and if it takes a law change to do that, then change the bloody law.
