Article content continued

At the funeral, the casket was surrounded by blue roses, her favourite flower, and Shen was dressed in her favourite clothes. She wore black leggings, a grey hoody and a black tuque that read PECULIAR from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a show that she loved. On her left wrist was a trio of bracelets from Hot Topic, her favourite store. She had purchased all three the day before the attack, her brother said.

At 24, Peter Shen is 11 years older than his sister. Originally, he said, his family had planned on having just one child, but they worried that “when they were gone, I’d be alone.” Shen said he and Marrisa were supposed to be “partners in life.”

“When Marrisa finally came, it was a breath of fresh air,” he said in the eulogy for his sister. “She was the shining beacon that heralded the end of my loneliness in this world. I knew that even if I had lost everyone in this world, I would have one person to have my back. It was Marrisa and me together, against this world.”

He mourned that he’d been robbed of the chance to show her the things a big brother should as she gets older.

“If I ever have the fortune to ascend to the place that you are now,” he said, “it will be your turn to show me.”

Photo by Jason Payne / PNG

Shen was followed by Tina Lee, the CEO of T&T foods, who delivered a eulogy in Mandarin before speaking English to the teens in attendance.

“This is an experience that no 13-year-old should have to go through,” she said of the grief-stricken students. “But the fact that you’re here shows maturity and bravery. This is one of the scariest things any of us have had to go through. It was a random act of hate and I think people should know that there’s nothing Marrisa could have done differently to prevent this from happening. There’s nothing her friends could have done differently to save her. There is nothing you can do that would have prevented this.