GRAVEYARD TRAGEDY

Hokitika Guardian, 21 March 1932, Page 8

GRAVEYARD TRAGEDY

6RIDAL BOUQUET FOR WREATH

CHILD’S POIGNANT SORROW

“I want my mummy. 1 want her to speak to me.” The tears rolled down the check* of eight-vear-old Audrey as she knelt by the side of her motliet, whose life, was fast ebbing away, kissing her face, pleading with her to speak. Her mother had collapsed in a cemetery, whither she had gone to lay flowers on relatives’ graves. These same flowers were bouquets which had been brought from the wedding of her niece only four hours previously. The dead woman, Mrs Elizabeth Fooete, aged 4b, who lived at Wednesbury, bad been one of the happiest of the wedding guests. “Our joy has been turned into sorrow,” commented Mrs Yates, Audrey’s aunt.

“My sister bad been so enthusiastic about the wedding of my daughter. Before the ceremony she told me she was wearing a black dress, brightened up with some flowers. She asked me d I were superstitious and how I liked her wearing a black dress at a wedding. Ii laughingly declared I was not superstituious. She was wearing that same dress when she died.

“A strange thing is that my sister’s husband, in proposing a toast, recounted a joke, and then, placing his hand on liis wife’s shoulder, said, ‘I have a good wife, and I hope I’ll have her for many years yet.’ Hs remark was greeted with applause. That was just two hours before she died.

“My daughter had wished that her bouquet should he placed on the grave of a maid of ours who died a year ago, and we had intended placing other bouquets on the grave of a cousin who was buried on tile day before the wedding, and on that of a sister of mine who died five years ago.

“We left the house just after three o’clock, and T had just finished placing the flowers on the second grave, when I heard little Audrey shout that her ‘mummy had stumbled.’ My husband and my sister and the little girl had been a few paces behind me and the other relative. According to my busband, my sister bad been chatting to him, when she suddenly collapsed without a word. A doctor was soon on the scene, but my sister was then lifeless.”