Kat's ashes home to be buried with Aids parents

Kat showed a huge zest for life and was affectionately considered to be her adopted family's youngest crew member

Kat Schurmann would have been 14 today. Instead of holding a birthday party, her family will bury her ashes next to those of her biological parents.

"We will never get over the loss, but we've coped with the 'why?" said her brother, David Schurmann.

"Now we have brought her home to lay her to rest and celebrate her life."

Kat was born in North Shore Hospital in 1992. Both her parents were HIV-positive and she was born with the virus. By the time she was 3, her mother had died and her ailing father asked Brazilian friends to adopt her.

"It was the most important decision in our lives," said Mr Schurmann.

Doctors told the family Kat's health was fragile and she did not have long. But new medicine gave her a better life and pleasurable childhood.

She loved to sail, and in 1997 began a 2 1/2-year circumnavigation of the globe with the family, visiting 19 countries.

In January 2003, David's parents brought her to New Zealand to see her father, who died that May.

Mr Schurmann said Kat displayed huge zest for life during her 11 years with his family, doing ballet, yoga, swimming, kayaking, scuba diving and whitewater rafting. But she faced a constant battle with sickness as well as discrimination. Pneumonia killed the family's youngest "crew member" on May 29.

Mr Schurmann said the family planned to hold a service this morning before burying Kat's ashes next to her parents on the North Shore.

"Kat lived her life so intensely that she left the message to live life to the full and remember the positives about her," he said.

"The sad part is missing her, but she is home in Aotearoa now."