RLINGTON - While most of the houses on her street were dark and silent in the chilly hours before dawn, Christine Couture sat on her living room couch and cried.
She was one of countless Boston-area mourners who got up early yesterday to watch coverage of Princess Diana's funeral. Dressed in a baggy purple sweatshirt and worn jeans, her hair pulled back and a box of tissues within reach, the 33-year-old bookkeeper stared at the television, transfixed by what she saw and transformed by what she felt.
''I just feel this special bond with her - I don't know how to describe it,'' Couture said, watching horses pull Diana's flag-draped coffin toward Westminster Abbey. ''I feel this huge sense of loss. ... This is a way of saying goodbye.''
Five days earlier, Couture had cried inconsolably when she and her mother, also named Diana, were among the thousands who visited the British Consulate in Boston. Both had placed two white majestic roses on a makeshift shrine and signed the condolence book.
Yesterday, Couture wept through much of the funeral, especially when Diana's picture was shown during singer Elton John's reworked version of ''Candle in the Wind.''
The same image struck a chord in Kirk Parks, 33, who watched the funeral with his fiancee at his Roxbury home. The Suffolk County court officer, who said he followed Diana's life closely, began watching preliminary coverage at 2 a.m. and called the service ''beautiful.''
Parks said that, for him, the most touching scene was when Princes William and Harry, along with their father and grandfather, joined the procession, keeping somber step behind their mother's casket.
In Weston, Sara Jones, 56, awoke at 4:45 a.m. Her husband Hugh, 59, an attorney, joined her on their enclosed porch about an hour later to watch the funeral.
Jones, a children's nurse who does volunteer work, was moved to tears by the candid speech by Diana's brother, the 9th Earl Spencer, who spoke of the paparazzi who ''hunted'' Diana.
''The honesty with which he spoke was extraordinary,'' she said. ''He seemed to appreciate her life and her struggles.''
Couture rose at 4 a.m. to watch the coverage, which she also taped for her vacationing mother. Clutching a cup of tea, she recalled the last time she had pulled herself out of bed so early to watch television: July 29, 1981, when Diana married Prince Charles in a grand ceremony at London's St. Paul's Cathedral.
''It was like a fairy tale,'' she said. ''A spectacular dress, a long aisle, and a prince at the end of it.''
But like many women, Couture was sympathetic when she learned that Diana's fairy-tale marriage was anything but. Couture said she was strengthened when the princess disclosed more painful details about her life, including eating disorders, postpartum depression, infidelity, and bouts with insecurity.
''Diana talked about things that normal women go through, and she broke the mold of the royal family,'' she said, reaching for a tissue. ''She was on a pedestal because she seemed so untouchable. But she really was very touchable.''
