My best friend Kevin Makin died and is buried in Tokomaru Bay. Kevin was an Englishman from Manchester. He was a great guy. He was as gay as you could get and would sleep with anybody! He did in the end marry Kahu a woman he met at Matapuna Training Centre. When he died he was in Palmerston North working for the regional council. I visited him two weeks before his death. I said to him he had to get out of there. The house were he lived was a den of drugs and very sad things. Unfortunately Kevin did not make it. I rang the undertaker who said no money no body. I sent some money to take care of that. We sent down a young guy in a borrowed van, but on the way back he crashed, spilling the coffin and body onto the road. Some young guys from the Territorial Army stopped and helped (it was not till years later that I was talking to a local and he said he helped but had not realised it was Kevin). We then sent some of the Mongrel Mob boys down to collect the body, they were fantastic.
Anyway the body was returned all be it a bit bruised.
I was accused by the family of being culturally insensitive. Well Kevin was English, Gay, a bit of a Buddhist and not religious. There was Kaumatua there from Tokomaru Bay and some from Gisborne. The coffin was on the lawn at Kevin's house just two doors from the Te Puka Tavern, it was sitting on a whariki (flax mat) and one Kaumatua said it had to point north another said it had to face the sea. I felt like saying, hey I am just trying to bury my friend can we please get on with it. We had a service at the house then at Tuatini Marae on the way to the Public Cemetery at Ongaruru. We had dug the grave in the morning and I told the guys it had to be big as he was going down. We got to the cemetery and were just about to put the body into the grave when the minister Boydie Kirikiri asked for the Death or Burial Certificate, I did not know you needed one, but luckily the people from the Manawatu Council had it with them so we were able to continue.
Sometime after the tangi I took Kevin's Computer home to see if he had any money or a will. We could find neither, all he seemed to have was lots of bills. I put the computer by the front door to return to Kahu his wife. The next thing I got a knock on the door and was handed a letter from a Solicitor telling me to hand over the computer, how sad when all they had to do was ask.
We contacted Kevin's family in the UK and I got faxes from friends in the USA but have not heard much since.