After the tangi, when everything of her had been buried with her, he went into her sleeping hut for a private moment.
The person fronts up and says: ‘I have to take leave for a tangi.’
One submitter was refused both bereavement and unpaid leave from work to attend the tangi of his partner's mother.
But he was sparked into action by the stress put on families staging tangi at their homes because there was no other suitable facility.
Kaore te Aroha is the tangi of a father for his daughter, who drowned swimming across from Mokoia island to meet the first minister at Ohinemutu.
What employer would employ Maori when he or she fears that all his or her Maori staff could take bereavement leave which will now be granted on top of sick leave because they have to go to a tangi?
‘He wanted to set an example to his people,’ she says, explaining how he opposed having a body lying in state at a tangi for weeks on end.
Telling the New Zealand public that Maori have unlimited tangi leave is a canard.
He has suggested that he would hire a Pakeha over a Maori of equal merit because, he said, Maori could claim unlimited tangi leave.
Holidays legislation does not give Maori unlimited tangi leave - the Minister corrected the statement - but the myth is repeated as fact to reinforce prejudice.
In another image, showing the tangi for the singer, a wave of grief seems to have washed over those present.
She was always there to lend a hand for tangi and every Easter and Christmas they would be making up food packages and sending them up the line ducks, geese, mushrooms and anything else that was around at the time.
In employment matters, he said, racial ‘equity’ policies and special rights, such as extended leave provisions for Maori tangi, should be ignored or over-ridden.
When I saw A-Lee (change of pseud again; last one I promise) on Friday it was the first time we'd caught up since her grandfather's tangi, which took place in the far north a couple of weeks ago.
However, during her tangi, while her body lay in its coffin, her spirit returned and began speaking through her aunt, giving messages of hope and assurance to her people.
When her husband and two sons died, she buried them in a small gravesite at the gully she knew so well, and every year she would trek there from Oakura to hold her own private tangi.
It was the first tangi for a Pakeha ever held on the Kaiaua Marae.
But after a terrific tangi, it went ahead as a special tribute.
His family had gone to a tangi there, and on a Sunday, the British troops had attacked.
But when Te Wherowhero asked to come inside the pa and hold a tangi for his dead, Te Ati Awa again grew suspicious and said no.