Connecticut school shooting: parents lay their son to rest It was a bright wintry day, but the ubiquitous sunglasses did little to hide the tears being shed for a country, a community and one small boy whose parents had described him as "an old soul," a child who loved life - swimming, soccer and playing in the ocean waves. Even aged seven, they said, Daniel had shown an instinctive appreciation of the needs of others, and his two older siblings, James, age 12, and Natalie, age 10, who doted on their little brother. "Our neighbors always said, 'He's like an old soul,'" his mother, Jackie Barden recalled this week in an interview with ABC News, "He carried that kindness with him as he got older. "He would hold doors open for adults all the time," added his father, Mark, laughing at the memory of how he would be "halfway" across a car park only to look back and see his Daniel still holding the door for a stranger. "Our son had so much love to give to this world," Mr Barden said, "He was supposed to have a whole lifetime of bringing that light to the world." And that was just the first funeral of the day: there were six wakes and burials in and around Sandy Hook yesterday, including the school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, the heroic teacher, 27-year-old Victoria Soto and three other children: Charlotte Bacon and Caroline Previdi, both six, and Chase Kowalski, aged seven. At the Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, the pews and car parks barely enough had time to empty and allow for a decent interval before the next service began - at noon - this time, in the memory of Caroline Previdi. She was the girl with an impish grin whose parents said she just loved to draw; she was recalled fondly by one neighbour as "silly Caroline," a girl who liked to play peek-a-boo and raise a laugh on the school bus. "She always had a smile on her face," Catharine Sherman, a 20-year-old student and former Sandy Hook pupil who also worked in the local soft play centre and knew seven of the dead children, told The Telegraph, "she was always surrounded by friends that adored her." The sadness might be physically centred in Sandy Hook, but via the media and the internet, it has been shared in by a nation - from the firefighters who came to Daniel Barden's funeral, to the people who bought dogs for the children to pet, to the nearly 200,000 people who signed a White House petition demanding Barack Obama stand up to the gun lobby. The grief that is swamping Sandy Hook is simply too raw to be ignored, like the letter that was spotted among the flowers and condolence cards at the funeral of six-year-old Jack Pinto on Monday and shared all over the internet. "Jack, you are my best friend," said the letter in shaky, Year-2 handwriting, "We had fun together.