By PHIL TAYLOR
Coral-Ellen Burrows lies in a place she associated with holidays, with summer, with fun.
Matamata is where her parents, Jeanna Cremen and Ron Burrows, met.
It's home, too, to some of their closest friends. Coral was buried beside one: Mack MacDonald, known to locals as "Fat Mack", who was her godfather.
Another close friend, Mike Hocking, is in the same cemetery on the northern fringe of this town of tidy hedgerows and lush paddocks.
The neat lawns, the headstones standing like soldiers on parade beneath weeping willows, make for a peacefulness Coral was denied at the end of her life.
It's a pretty and quiet place despite the sprawl of lifestyle blocks and gated subdivisions that neighbour the cemetery.
Black and shades of grey are the hues of funerals and so it was yesterday from the hearse to the sky, to the attire of the adults.
Colour was reserved for the children, the innocents. They wore pinks and purples and placed around the coffin a rainbow array of Coral's soft toys. The coffin itself was luminous yellow, matching an enormous Tweety Bird - Coral's favourite character.
Coral's mother, a white ribbon - symbol of an anti-violence campaign - pinned to her coat, and father, his trademark beanie tucked into the pocket of his dress pants, sat in the front row but left it to friends, aunts, uncles and cousins to speak.
Her life was celebrated, but it was the angry speeches that drew overt responses from the crowd - a mix of Pakeha and Maori, mothers cradling babies, men in leather jackets and dark glasses, ordinary folk (Police Minister George Hawkins one of the few in a suit) trying to come to terms with the death of a little girl.
Words were all that was available but there was a mood for action.
Brent Hobman, a friend of 12 years to both Coral's parents, raised smiles when he spoke of sojourns to swimming pools with Coral and brother Storm and of the "outrageous" difficulty of getting them to sleep at night.
But when he spoke of vengeance he had their applause.
In a quiet voice, he vented the anger that seemed to underlie the day, speaking of weak justice and soft prisons.
A more "medieval" response - an eye for an eye - fitted this crime, he suggested. He spoke from frustration and the fear Coral's death would be in vain.
Coral's stepfather is accused of her murder.
Coral's cousin, Neils Jensen, an independent church pastor and the family's spokesman, railed about politicians tinkering around the edges but failing to address "the heart issues - love, family, children".
Such tinkering seemed to refer to Coral's death being caught up with talk of reforming smacking, something which had upset the family.
Responsible discipline had nothing to do with her death, they have pointed out.
An anti-smacking law would restrict reasonable punishment carried out by reasonable people. Reasonable people don't kill children and killers pay no mind to law.
But Coral's death has again shown that the risk may come from anywhere.
One mourner, a father of eight says his children's stepfather is hitting his daughters. He feels powerless. "You don't hit girls but if I was to assault him I'd lose access to my kids."
The service and burial yesterday marked the end of the public process for the family, but not the agony.
"The main pain comes when it's all over," said Ken Schlager-Reay, one of the victim-support counsellors there to help the family.
When there were no more ceremonies, when friends had returned home, "you wake up one morning and it hits you".
"All the words in the world don't make it any better."
Coral-Ellen finds peace with family friends
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