Love In a Sunburnt Country (12 page)

At sunset David had been driving and he had not seen cows crossing. One had collided with his ute and it had rolled several times and David had been killed. News like this makes no sense. Gaps open up between the words that you hear from other people and you utter yourself … and then the gaps close and time runs too fast … and your emotions grab for time as it flies by and try to turn it back and will for it all to have happened differently. Cathy fell back on politeness and found herself offering a cup of tea to them all: Janet, Paul and the policemen. They were all very caring, she says. She was glad that it was they who came to tell her what had happened. Having the boys told and how it could best be done was next on her mind.

‘It was four o'clock in the morning and I said, “I'm not ringing the boys now, this might be the last good night's sleep they get for a while.”' She wasn't worried that the boys would see it on Facebook, not at four o'clock in the morning. ‘I waited, then I rang at about seven-thirty to start the ball rolling for them to find out. They found out at about nine o'clock in the morning.'

Cathy was very particular about how this would occur—who was to tell them, and who was to be with them as they heard the news.

‘I wanted Father Maher to tell them. In the meantime I called friends who knew us and all our boys. Their son Liam was up with us on the station at the time. Liam had already told his parents, and when I rang Mandy she was crying, and I said “I just wanted you and Dave to be with the kids when they hear this news”, and she said “of course”. She also called for me my friend Kerry who had lost her husband in an accident when her children were very little. Connor thought he'd been called up to the office for doing something wrong … then he saw Rhys and Gerard … and he thought of his grandfather, as I had done. So Kerry, Mandy and David were with the boys, and Father Maher said to them: “There is no easy way to say this, boys—your dad has been killed.” And then I told Anthony.'

Young Henry (David's brother) was in Perth and Cathy asked him to pick the boys up and bring them home. He just sat in the car park of the school, dreading sharing the news.

‘He was relieved to find that he'd been spared the horror of having to tell the kids. And the school gave them breakfast, made packed lunches for all of them. It took them a while to get home. I was really happy when I saw the boys. To have them home was good.

‘The good thing about having my family over east was that I had two hours up my sleeve. I started ringing them at five-thirty because it was seven-thirty their time and not too bad a time to ring them with news. It wasn't something any of us had experienced at such close quarters before. All of them were in shock—as much in shock as I was. David was the first one in our family who had died. We still had Mum and Dad, my brothers and sisters were all still alive, all of David's family, his parents. My sister Bernadette was inconsolable, her husband told me later. She said, “Those poor kids, those poor kids, they've lost their dad.” Less than two years later she was dead herself.'

Cathy's oldest sister Marie was on long service leave, and she asked if Cathy wanted her.

‘I said, “Yes, I want you to come.” And she came over straight away. It has been good for us, we've been a lot closer. Everyone else, they had little kids, and jobs, and I said to them, “I want you here for the funeral, wait for that.” They arranged flights, then they had to change them, because David's funeral took a long time to happen.'

Cathy had initially thought of a cremation, with David's ashes scattered on Boogardie. But Connor asked instead that his father be buried so that he was able to go and sit and talk to him. Cathy sent David's brothers John and Henry on a mission to find a plot in the Mt Magnet cemetery, but they returned to tell her that no spot looked right. Then a neighbour said it was possible for him to be buried on Boogardie.

‘So we went through the local government department to have him buried on the station. We had to have maps and references … It was supposed to take four or five days until we had an answer—but no answer came in that time. So I rang up. I said, “I need to bury my husband.”'

The service was by now organised. When the undertaker had asked who would do the eulogy Cathy had found herself saying, without prior thought, ‘That would be me.' Like leaving religious life, the decision rang true within Cathy. It felt like David speaking within her and to her, and that gave her comfort. But she'd already been comforted by two visits, in those long days before David could be buried.

‘I dreamt that I saw him. It was a beautiful blue sky, a nice day, where he was. He was wearing a Driza-Bone and an Akubra. He just stood there and he said, “I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.”'

Cathy related that dream to her sister Teresa, who listened in staggered silence. One of Teresa's own friends had called to say, ‘Is something wrong with your husband?' ‘No,' said Theresa. ‘Nothing is wrong.' The friend said ‘I'm hearing someone say, “I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry” and I'm connecting it with you.'

A few days later Cathy had another dream.

‘He had a big black jumper. He used to bring joeys home like that. And I said to him, “David, have you got a joey?” And he lifted back the jumper, and there was a tiny baby. We had lost one and it broke my heart. And I thought: “You're okay, and you're with the baby.” It was amazingly comforting.'

Comforted by David himself, Cathy acted with clarity and purpose. She delivered the eulogy.

‘I began it by saying I had the strength to stand up that day because David had never let me be a pampered princess—so now I could talk on this day to everyone here about the love of my life.'

Another friend spoke of David's life as a child, and David's four boys had all written prayers for him. On the day itself the boys faltered, but Cathy said to them with her fierce confidence in them blazing: ‘You can do this. You can, because you are doing it for your dad.' Every boy stood and read his prayer clearly, undaunted by the enormous number of people who had attended the funeral.

‘We put David on the back of a Toyota—and the boys sat on the back with him, and our best man Michael's son Tim sat with them. I sat in the front and John drove. John had done a beautiful job of digging the grave. And the men filled in the grave then and there—it was quite a beautiful thing, it mesmerised me, I didn't want to leave. It was good to see young men, old men, kids, all putting something in.'

She was to have the same experience of being transfixed by the sacred a few months later at another funeral: one at which she was officiating. A young boy had committed suicide, no priest was available, and Cathy was asked to help. The closeness to David's death momentarily gave her pause, but she wanted to help the family and agreed. It has turned out to be, she says, the most profoundly spiritual experience of her life so far.

‘I had to take a deep breath. I said to myself, “You are here for this young boy, you are here for his family.” The family was lovely. I did the service in the hall, and then we went out to the cemetery. I did a prayer, and then the family took over. They lowered the coffin, they played a song. The men started to shovel in the dirt and made a mound over it. The men all went round the mound, leaning on it, patting it. Then the women. They leaned on the mound and they cried. Then they put flowers on it. There was so much love.

‘I thought: “I can't move. I can't take my eyes off this.” I also felt that perhaps I shouldn't be here. I was the only person who wasn't Aboriginal, the only person who wasn't family … I felt out of place but I couldn't move. I'll never forget it.'

Like the musician held suspended by music of extraordinary beauty, or the artist who cannot pull his eyes from a sunset, Cathy, a student of the human spirit and of God, was taken out of herself by this scene of perfect love and grief.

‘David started the run of deaths in August 2011, then it was Bernadette, then Mum, then Dad and Grandfather Henry too,' says Cathy.

Cathy talks a lot about the big transitions of life: who was present for each baby and how they were born—the death of each loved family member, who was there, how it all happened, how they were buried. She's a moment-by-moment thinker, not caught back in the past, but with the habit of dwelling so deeply in the moment that she can bring those moments back to mind. That ability to inhabit and expand the passing moment for those sharing it with her is one of her gifts. When Bernadette died, then her mother and then her father, Cathy found herself offered the chance to use that gift to help celebrate the lives of her own family members.

‘With Bernadette it wasn't a choice. The priest said that he couldn't do the Rosary Service for her, and that needs to take place the night before the funeral. He asked if someone in the family could do it, and so I said that I would. I came early with my sisters, and I asked if they could leave me by myself for a little to “get with God”. At the end I felt this sense—almost out of body—of God at work and reaching the people. Then my mum died, and the priest again said, “I can't do the Rosary on this particular night” … and I realised that it would be better if I did it, rather than a stranger. So again, I thought about what scripture is good for Mum, what aspects of the Rosary, what fits for her life. And again God was with me, touching the people who were there.

‘As we were burying Mum—putting flowers and dirt into the grave, and Dad threw some coins in—Dad said, “Don't worry Mary, I won't be long.” It was like
voom
—like a heavy blow on my chest: I remember it as clear as day. That night he said, “I don't feel very well, you'd better take me home.” And then he got worse. At midnight he was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. Then my brother rang me at four o'clock in the morning and said the hospital rang to ask if we wanted Dad given antibiotics. And I said, “Yes, of course we want him to have antibiotics. He's our dad, we're not just going to let him go!”

‘The doctor came in at about nine in the morning and felt Dad's stomach and he said, “He has gut rot so we'll just put him on morphine.”'

Cathy and her siblings explained that their father had just lost his wife, their mother. The doctor responded merely by saying, ‘This often happens.' Cathy was incredulous at his dismissiveness. ‘Not to us, it doesn't,' she said, trying to help him see that everyone has a finite number of parents and they can die but once in your life. Saying ‘this often happens' to a grieving family is akin to saying to them ‘everyone has to die sometime'. Such phrases carry a subtext of ‘so what's the big deal?' or ‘surely you were expecting this!' or ‘you shouldn't be so surprised and upset'.

‘Mum was his life, when she died he must have felt that his work was done—Bernadette had been gone nine months exactly then. Her death really rocked my dad. His baby gone, he couldn't believe it. He must have thought, “Well, Mary's gone, Bernadette's gone and the rest of them are big enough to look after themselves.”

‘This time the priest asked me, even though he was present, to lead the Rosary for Dad. And the priest said afterwards he was touched by the service and that was good for me to hear. I still love that work, sharing my faith as part of leading a service.'

I had wondered, initially, if this series of losses might have weakened Cathy's faith, but clearly it has not. As well as saying that faith is a gift, Cathy says also that it is ‘action'—in her own keeping-on without collapsing in a heap after David's accident, in the way people have helped her, in the kindness and care shown to her boys by their school, in the way her boys have found mentors and employers who do some of what David did in their lives, and the way her boys help each other. In all this she doesn't just find evidence of God, but of David, still caring for and helping them all.

It can be very tough financially when two income earners are reduced to one. But Mazenod, the boarding school the boys attended, reduced their fees and then found insurance money to subsidise the fees in the year following. Mt Magnet School principal, Richard Cook, suggested that she apply for a literacy consultant position and helped check through her application before it went in. In 2012 Anthony had left for boarding school.

At the end of 2014 it was suggested Cathy apply for the principal's position at the little town of Cue, an hour's drive north of Mt Magnet. Again, with some assistance in selling herself, which is not Cathy's thing, she applied and was successful. It was time, she said, for a change. She was getting too comfortable at Mt Magnet. Cathy has no interest in being kept in—or keeping herself in—cotton wool. This is something all her boys have learned from her. They do not shy away from challenges. When one of Cathy and David's sons is faced with a challenge they research the possibilities and take thoughtful action.

‘They didn't collapse in a heap, they kept going,' Cathy says with pride, knowing that David is proud too.

‘On Sundays, Josie always asks God to look after Henry and David. I say to her, “You don't need to ask God to look after them. They're okay, God has to look after the rest of us.” It's a bit of banter between us. She always says it and I always tell her, “No, they're alright, you don't have to worry about them!”'

Cathy talks to David every day. She says such things as: ‘I love you David, but I'm not ready to come up there yet.' She tells him what is happening with his sons. From time to time she can feel his physical presence, and a comforting weight pressing on her arm or her hand.

‘Anthony had to write an essay in exam conditions. Last time he was asked to do this he baulked totally and just wouldn't. So I was speaking to David about it the other night, and I felt like he was with me. And so I thought, it will be alright with Anthony, he'll be okay.'