Heaven claimed the last three little angels today.
Josephine Gay, Ana Marquez-Greene and Emilie Parker — Newtown’s remaining little victims — received tear-drenched send-offs today, as their families and the nation continued to mourn their tragic murders.
“You don’t need words to say I love you,” said Bob Gay during his daughter’s eulogy at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown.
Gay’s family and friends remembered the sweet little girl who endured physical therapy nearly every day and who had just celebrated her 7th birthday three days before the attack.
Joey — as her mom and dad called her — was autistic and couldn’t speak.
“You don’t need words to say I love you,” her father said.
She communicated with her parents and sisters through hand gestures.
Her sisters, Marie and Sophia, held that lesson close to their hearts as they gave their own good-byes, piling presents by her coffin — Barbie dolls, a Barbie car and a stuffed chipmunk.
A display of pictures drawn by Josephine and her sister Marie stood at the front of the church, which was filled with purple flowers. The mourners wore purple too — it was Joey’s favorite color.
On one of Joey’s pictures were the words: “My hope and dream for this year is to read more books.”
Next to it, as if in stark response to that dream, was a picture drawn by Marie of Joey and the Sandy Hook teachers as angels.
As Josephine’s purple and white casket was led from the church, her mother, Michele, sang “On Eagles Wings” and leaned hard on her husband.
The funerals are the last of 27 held this week in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last week, when madman Adam Lanza burst into the school and killed 26 children and teachers. Lanza, 20, shot his own mother dead in their home just minutes before.
Funeral services for Parker, 6, were held in Ogden, Utah where her family lived before they moved to Newtown this year. Marquez-Greene, also six, was memorialized at a service in Bloomfield, Conn, where hundreds of mourners came to the First Cathedral Church to say goodbye.
Marquez-Greene’s white casket arrived at the church in a horse-drawn hearse, and the service began with mourners lighting candles for her murdered classmates and the teachers.
The solemn ceremony then gave way to videos of the young girl with dark curly hair and deep brown eyes who loved to sing.
“Ana had a song,” the Rev. Paul Echtenkamp told the Connecticut Post. “It just came out of her.”
Ana and her family had moved to Newtown just five months ago from Winnipeg, Canada. Her funeral was also broadcast at the church she and her family attended there.