As Ivars Veits reached into the coffin to say a final goodbye to his daughter, he caressed her forehead, wiped his eyes and looked towards the sky.
Across the snow-covered cemetery in the rural townland of Kapsedes in northwest Latvia, hundreds gathered yesterday for the funeral of Ginta Veits (19) and her mother, Aija Porcika (38). Both were killed just over a week ago in a car crash near Buncrana, Co Donegal, in which three women and a man from Latvia and a man from Lithuania died.
For Mr Veits, a 44-year-old fishmonger who lost his only daughter and former wife in an accident almost 2,000 kilometres away, this was always going to be the hardest of moments.
"To know it will be the last time I will see her face is almost impossible to accept," he told The Irish Times in an interview, a few hours before the funeral. "It is still hard to believe that this has happened, so far away from home."
After a ceremony in a small chapel a few kilometres from Kapsedes, the coffins of both mother and daughter were arranged at the graveside and opened in view of the mourners.
Ginta Veits's best friend, Baiba Cice (22), a florist whose shop had helped to arrange many of the floral tributes, wept at the graveside as she reached to touch the hand of a soulmate she had grown up with as a teenager.
"She was my closest friend," she said in an interview earlier in the day. "You do not meet these kinds of people on the street corner. They are very, very special." As she spoke, her colleagues in the shop arranged in neat bunches of red roses, ready for the funeral.
"There are no carnations," Baiba said. "She never liked them. We were talking about that in one of our last conversations before she left to go Ireland."
At the funeral, many of Ginta's friends from Riga Technical University had rented an old bus to make it to the rural location, some 20 kilometres from the port city of Liepaja.
Her mother's former neighbours spread small fir-tree branches along the ground, in the tradition of funerals in this part of the country.
At the graveside, in what was a non-denominational funeral and burial, the officiator, Gunars Kristvalds, paid tribute to a mother and daughter whose lives, he said, were cut cruelly short.
Aija was a warm-hearted personality who had gone to Ireland in search of a new life. She had enjoyed her experiences there and had even spoken about settling permanently in the country.
Ginta was the liveliest of girls, who had inherited many of her mother's characteristics, with a smile and a friendly word for everyone she met, he said.
The business studies student had gone to Ireland to meet her mother and work for a few months before returning to Latvia and establishing her life in the city of Liepaja.
Both were killed just hours after they had been reunited at Dublin airport after a separation of nearly a year.
"It is one of the hardest things to do, but we have to hold on to the memories of them as they lived, to remember who they were and the good they brought into people's lives" Mr Kristvalds told mourners.
Representatives from Liepaja city council, which has said it will provide social assistance to any dependants who were relying on family members in Ireland for financial support, were among those present.
The State was represented by the Ambassador to Latvia, Tim Mawe. Irish authorities funded the repatriation of those killed in the crash, while messages of support and financial assistance from Irish people have been relayed to families such as the Leits.
"We want to say thank you to the Irish people and authorities," said Ivars Veits, in strained tones before the funeral, as he gripped the hand of his partner, Svetlana Grinberga. "You have done so much for us. And for that we are very grateful. Thank you."