The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Cather­ine Frances Hon­ey 31.07.1963 — 16.11.1988

The 16th of Novem­ber 1988 dawned a sun­ny warm spring day and I woke up around 7am feel­ing fresh for once. Jump­ing out of bed, I wan­dered out to the kitchen to make a cup­pa of cof­fee to liv­en me up. I stood there lis­ten­ing to the birds singing in Dad’s aviary out the back as I wait­ed for the jug to boil, lit­tle real­iz­ing that the day would turn out to be the worse day of my life.

It was five days before my 22nd birth­day and the house was emp­ty, mum and dad were in Syd­ney at dad’s heart spe­cial­ist, as dad had only been released from hos­pi­tal the week before after hav­ing a near fatal series of heart attacks. I sat read­ing the paper and short­ly after­wards there was the sound of a key turn­ing in the front door, my sis­ter Cathy had arrived for her morn­ing cup­pa on the way to work.

Cathy lived half an hour south of us in Jam­beroo with her hus­band Trevor and worked about ten kilo­me­tres north of us in Fairy Mead­ow so it was log­i­cal for her to leave home ear­li­er of a morn­ing and stop in for a cup­pa with mum and dad before work. I was usu­al­ly fast asleep at this time and missed see­ing her. I start­ed work at 10 of a morn­ing and my nights were full of par­ty­ing so lazy late morn­ings were the norm for me.

But this morn­ing my body clock decid­ed dif­fer­ent for me and my sis­ter sat down and drank her cof­fee with me and we talked. We real­ly talked, for prob­a­bly the first time in our lives we talked, as two adults, as sis­ters. We talked about me start­ing uni in Wag­ga in the new year and how excit­ed I was that my life was going where I want­ed it to go, that the con­fu­sion of my teen years and rela­tion­ship with Zoran, Krys­tals father were behind me.

We talked of Cathy’s inabil­i­ty to con­ceive and how it had hurt me that nobody had told me about it. My par­ents and sis­ter were very closed in “pri­vate mat­ters” and felt that it was some­thing not to de dis­cussed with­in the fam­i­ly. So I nev­er had a clue there was a prob­lem and just thought that they had­n’t decid­ed to have kids yet. Me being me, was a “stir­rer” every time I would see her I would tease her about her extend­ed wait to have chil­dren, lit­tle real­iz­ing the pain and tor­ment I must have vis­it­ed upon her each and every­time I “stirred it up”. Why had­n’t mum qui­et­ly tak­en me aside and said hey there is prob­lems. I end­ed up find­ing out through one of my sis­ter friends.

My sis­ter and I dis­cussed this for the first time. I told her I was pre­pared any­time to be a sur­ro­gate moth­er for her and she was over the moon. I told her if she had told me pri­or it would already be hap­pen­ing, I would have done it any­time. She explained that she had an appoint­ment lat­er that morn­ing with her gyno and she would tell him what I had said and see what we had to do if her cur­rent treat­ment did­n’t work.

I had two jobs at the time, one at the fra­ter­ni­ty club as a cashier and bar wench and dur­ing the day I worked at the TAFE food school which was also at Fairy Mead­ow as a chef’s assis­tant. Most­ly I worked with the pas­try chef and at the end of the day I would take home deli­cious cakes that had been baked, choco­late cakes, tea cakes, but­ter cakes, birth­day cakes, Christ­mas cakes, cup­cakes, cream sponge cakes, buns and slices, bis­cuits and cook­ies every sin­gle good­ie and sweet imag­in­able.

So before Cathy left that fate­ful morn­ing I hand­ed her two giant cakes for her work­place’s morn­ing tea. I walked her down to the car, still chat­ting a way, a pleas­ant relaxed feel­ing inside and a hope that our rela­tion­ship would be lit­tle eas­i­er from now on. I watched as she placed the cakes on the floor of the car then she climbed into the dri­vers side and drove off. I stayed stand­ing there long after her car had dis­ap­peared around the cor­ner in Gun­darun street.

It was 8.35 am 16th Novem­ber 1988.

A lit­tle while lat­er when I had got­ten out of the show­er there was anoth­er knock at the door. It was Lisa one of my friends who had come to take Krys­tal-Leigh and babysit her while I was at work.  We chat­ted while I con­tin­ued to get ready and then she said “Oh by the way, don’t go your usu­al way to work today. There has been an acci­dent on the F6 and some­one died.”

I froze, my blood froze, I knew at that point, I just knew I did­n’t know how I knew I just did. I looked at Lisa and said “where”. She explained it was about 200 metres south of the Gipps road over­pass, a sil­ver car had gone under a truck.

The blood drained from my face as I pic­tured myself not 40 min­utes ear­li­er wav­ing to the back of a sil­ver sedan as it cruised down my street. I shook my head and sen­si­bil­i­ty set in. “No, thou­sands of cars trav­el along the express­way each day, hun­dreds of those cars are sil­ver”. The thoughts raced around in my head, a mil­lion sce­nar­ios.

I explained to Lisa my fears and we both found a hun­dred rea­sons for our imag­i­na­tion get­ting away from us. Lisa left soon after and I fnished get­ting ready and jumped in my car for the jour­ney to work.

I just had a “bad feel­ing” I could­n’t explain the pit in my stom­ach or why I felt the way I did. It felt like the sun­ny day was over­cast by a grey shad­ow. I drove off and as I turned into Rob­sons road down towards the express­way onramps, I could see to the north the flash of red and blue lights. The traf­fic was banked up on the south­ern side trav­el­ing north only, way back as far as I could see past Figtree, the next sub­urb to the south.

I went straight ahead instead of attempt­ing the onramp and drove along the par­al­lel side road amongst the hous­ing estates. When I got to Gipps Road, the fear and curios­i­ty got the bet­ter of me, instead of keep­ing on going the direc­tion I was going, I detoured again, dri­ving along the road that would take me over the over­pass. I got to the bridge and slowed to a crawl, many oth­er dri­vers were stopped and there was a crowd on the bridge look­ing towards the acci­dent. I craned my neck to see amongst the peo­ple towards the acci­dent which I could see about 150 metres to the south of me. Then I saw it. A sil­ver sedan that looked so famil­iar.

“I had to keep dri­ving, there was cars behind me and I had to get to work. Once again the sen­si­ble fairy sat on my shoul­der chat­ter­ing away. Don’t be sil­ly, there is hun­dreds of sil­ver cars, many many sil­ver cars, beside you are as blind as a bat, you haven’t got your con­tacts in so you could­n’t see what it was, It could be a Ford or Toy­ota and even if it was a Hold­en, it could have been a com­modore”.

I rea­soned with myself the rest of the way to work but always at the back of my rea­son­ing was this awful pit of fear and know­ing.

I walked into the food school in zom­bie mode, I don’t remem­ber arriv­ing in the staffroom but when I arrived I found I could­n’t bear it any­more. The bells were chim­ing loud­ly and I ran upstairs to the Head Teach­ers office to ask If I could use his phone. I dialed the num­ber to Cathy’s work­place and shook as it con­nect­ed, expect­ing to hear Cathy’s voice and then hav­ing the sen­si­ble fairy slap my face and tell me to go lie on a couch some­where and talk about my Histron­ic per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der. But no, one of the oth­er girls answered “oh no Cathy’s not in yet”.

Thud, my heart hit my feet as I replaced the receiv­er. I looked at my boss­es sec­re­tary who I knew lived at Figtree to the south of the acci­dent. I asked what time she had left for work and she answered “oh about 8.40”.

I asked her if she had been held up and dri­ven passed the acci­dent and she nod­ded and said she had been held up about 20 mins but still got to work only a lit­tle late. By this time the alarm bells were deaf­en­ing but the sen­si­ble fairy kept run­ning around with cot­ton­wool and silenc­ing the sound.

While this was going on some my fel­low staff not work­ing in class­es, had gath­ered and two of them asked me what vehi­cle she was dri­ving and then left to dri­ve back passed the acci­dent to check it all out. My boss rang the police and hos­pi­tal only to be told there was no details. I dialed my broth­er in laws num­ber and was relieved when he answered the phone. I asked him if Cathy was going any­where else before work that morn­ing. He said no and told me about the appoint­ment lat­er that morn­ing that he was meet­ing her for.

He asked why I want­ed to know and once again the fairies came out argu­ing but I felt I should say some­thing.
“I don’t want to scare you or alarm you Trevor but there has been an acci­dent on the F6. It’s a sil­ver car and Cathy’s not at work yet”.

Silence and then Trevor said “Hang on a minute, it’s 10 am the news will be on”> He dropped the phone and I could hear the radio faint­ly in the back­ground report­ing the acci­dent as the top head­lines.
“The sole fam­le occu­pant of a sil­vr grey Cami­ra has been fatal­ly injured in a head on coll­sion on the F6 this morn­ing at Gyn­neville”.
All of a sud­den I could hear Trevor keen­ing in the back­ground, “noooooooooooooooooooo”

He came back on the phone after a minute and I told him to calm down and that we did­n’t know for sure. I relayed the hun­dred sen­si­ble points I had argued with myself over all morn­ing to him and told him I was ring­ing the hos­pi­tal again. He said he would get ready and come up to Wol­lon­gong imme­di­ate­ly, ear­li­er than he was going to.

After I hung up I turned to see Vivian and Troy arrive back from their dri­ve to the acci­dent with what I can only describe as looks of pity, com­mis­er­a­tion, empa­thy, on their faces. Looks I became famil­iar with very quick­ly.

They whis­pered to my boss and strange­ly enough his own face began to mir­ror those same looks. Mean­while I rang the police and when I final­ly got through explained I was wor­ried about my sis­ter. “We don’t know any­thing Ma’am you are going to have to ring the hos­pi­tal”. Frus­trat­ed I slammed the phone down and dialed the hos­pi­tal. After a wait on hold I was put through to four or five depart­ments before I final­ly got the response. “I am sor­ry ma’am you will have to ring the police for infor­ma­tion”.

Back in the eight­ies there was no mobiles or cell phones, I could­n’t dial her cell to find out if she was ok. By this stage I was fran­tic but the voice of rea­son kept me under con­trol. I was still rea­son­ing in my head that this was a dream, it was sur­re­al, that I was going to turn around and look like a ripe fool for wast­ing every­one’s time and con­cern.

I was afraid I was caus­ing dra­ma and being a dra­ma queen over noth­ing and I real­ly want­ed that to be so. The pit of despair, the know­ing, the reach­ing out in my mind know­ing she was­n’t there were all pushed to the back of my mind, to hang like dark shad­ows, by that same rea­son­ing.

I just knew. I did­n’t know how I knew but I had known a week before and I knew now but I refused to accept that I knew. I did­n’t want to know this one. This one was too much.
Vivian approached me and offered to dri­ve me to the hos­pi­tal to see if we could find out more info, it all felt so sur­re­al. We drove in silence, I was locked in an inner bat­tle of wills. “Yes or no, Don’t be sil­ly. What a dra­ma queen. Snap out of it Mar­garet. You do KNOW, so now accept it. Nah, what an imag­i­na­tion, aren’t you going to feel the fool tomor­row”. The thoughts and fears ran around my mind in scat­tered sequences.

We arrived at the hos­pi­tal and made our way to emer­gency. By this time after umpteen diver­sions and detours I just want­ed to know the truth. We explained our sto­ry yet again to the woman behind the counter and she dis­ap­peared off to find yet anoth­er diver­sion for us. I leaned back against the wall and the thoughts drift­ed once again around in my head. It was fair­ly dark in the wait­ing area and I turned towards the cor­ri­dor and the emer­gency the­atre itself, to see four doc­tors in white coats strid­ing pur­pose­ful­ly down the pol­ished white, tiled floor. The first one came up to me and asked me my name. he then said that he did­n’t know any­thing and that the police were on their way to the hos­pi­tal to take my details. Oh great I felt like such a crim­i­nal. Every­one in the wait­ing room was star­ing at me by this time and the doc­tors ush­ered Vivian and I into a room at the very east­ern end of the hos­pi­tal wing.

We sat on a chair in the tiny room and wait­ed. I got up and looked out of the tiny win­dow towards the sea, I could see the police car snaking its way up the emer­gency entrance dri­ve and I went back and sat in silence oppo­site Vivian.

Not long after three offi­cer came into the room, the two male offi­cers beck­oned to Vivian and took her out­side, leav­ing me with the female offi­cer. I stood up and said “look I am sick of this shit, I have been sent every­where and told noth­ing all morn­ing I just want to know the truth”

She sat there and looked up with her big blue eyes into my own plead­ing ones, the answer I did­n’t want to see was plain­ly writ­ten there. She sighed and hung her head and said “we think it is your sis­ter, I am so sor­ry, she died instant­ly”.

I spun around and punched the wall, stand­ing there stunned, the morn­ings events crash­ing down on my shoul­ders like a ton of bricks from above. The rea­son­ing fairy was tri­umphant­ly squashed by the voice of doom……….all my night­mares all my fears, all the hor­ror. Any moment now I would wake up and be back at work plan­ning which cakes to take home for the days to be eager­ly con­sumed by my par­ents and sis­ter.

I took a deep breathe, pushed it all away and turned back to her. “What Hap­pened?”

She explained that Cathy had been dri­ving in the right lane near the medi­um strip (think dri­ving left hand side of road) and she came to a spot that had a gush­ing river­let of water run­ning across from the night befor­es rain. The pipes had­n’t ben build under the road to con­tain the rain­wa­ter flow and it flowed across the road in this one “dip” point. The car in front of her had slammed his foot on the brakes to get into the left lane to take the Syd­ney off­shoot and she in turn had braked hard, just as she was dri­ving over the flow­ing water. Her car was front wheel dri­ve and it belonged to her hus­bands broth­er, it was­n’t her usu­al car so she was­n’t as famil­iar with it as she was her rear end dri­ve hold­en.

She skid­ded and went over the medi­um strip straight into the path of an oncom­ing truck. The seat­ing area of the car where she was had not sus­tained any dam­age, the left front side had gone hard up against the truck and under it’s cab. Cathy’s head had snapped to the side and she broke her neck on impact with the win­dow.

I sat there for a minute try­ing to absorb what was being said…. I final­ly spoke. “and what about the idiot who decides to brake on an express­way to change lanes way to late to be ready for the off­shoot”?

The police­woman shook her head. He had gone in a cloud of dust, nev­er to be seen again, pos­si­bly nev­er real­iz­ing the trag­ic dev­as­ta­tion and cat­a­stro­phe he had left behind. The truck dri­ver was sedat­ed, he had no time to avoid the col­li­sion.

The police­woman looked at me and spoke again “We can’t find your par­ents and your sis­ters hus­band is sedat­ed as well now. Thank you for call­ing him, he called his par­ents after he spoke to you and they arrived just before the police wag­on pulled into his street to tell him the offi­cial news. I need to ask you, we can wait for Trevor but the media already has the details and we need the body iden­ti­fied, do you feel up to it.”

I nod­ded slow­ly although every fibre of my being was scream­ing no, no no . I don’t even like hor­ror movies and this was real life shit. But I did­n’t want my par­ents in any morgue iden­ti­fy­ing her body and Trevor too, the wife he loved and adored so I made my way down to the morgue with Vivian and the three offi­cers.

We stepped inside. It smelt of dis­in­fec­tant. This was the sec­ond time in my life I had been inside such a place, the first time was my birth in a morgue and now this, 5 days shy of my 22nd birth­day to iden­ti­fy my dead sis­ter. I was tak­en to a room with a glass screen cov­ered by a cur­tain on the oth­er side, Short­ly after the police offi­cer came and stood beside me and warned me that my sis­ter had died of head injuries and it would not be pleas­ant.
I did­n’t want to hear her, I just want­ed to do what I had to do and be out of there, I want­ed it all not to be real, I want­ed to get a hug off my mum and her tell me it would be ok.
The cur­tain slid back and my eyes lift­ed to slow­ly take in what I was see­ing. It was my sis­ter but it was­n’t. She was life­less, pur­ple, swollen and bruised. Her eyes were closed and there was dried blood around her mouth. A sheet cov­ered her up to her chest but I could see the mas­sive bruis­ing on her chest. She did­n’t look asleep, she looked dead, white gray swollen dead.

I turned away and walked out of the room, say­ing yes that’s my sis­ter as I left. As I walked out I asked the offi­cers if they had man­aged to get my par­ents at the road­blocks up the moun­tains and they shook their heads.

I turned to Vivian and asked her if she could dri­ve me to Gran B’s. Mum and dad would go straight there for lunch on their arrival back from Syd­ney and pick my daugh­ter Krys­tal up to take her home. We pulled into the street and I gave a sigh of relief to see my par­en­t’s car out the front. All emo­tion was locked down, there were things to be done. I got out and went up to the wire secu­ri­ty door. I looked down the hall­way to my father sit­ting there in puz­zle­ment at my arrival in my pink work uni­form.

Grand­ma came and answered the door and took one look at my white face, ask­ing me what was wrong. I float­ed past her into the din­ing room where my par­ents were sit­ting, obliv­i­ous­ly enjoy­ing a sal­ad lunch.

The radio was on in the back­ground, the strains of the 12 oclock NEWS broad­cast runin music already blast­ing into the room.

Dad stood up. “whats wrong”.

“Cathy’s been in an acci­dent I said, with­out a flick­er of emo­tion in my voice and on my face.”
Mum jumped up. “Is she ok”.

“No she’s dead,” I answered and sat on the sofa star­ing straight ahead. “she was in an acci­dent on the f6 and she was killed instant­ly. Oh mum I am so sor­ry”.

Mum and dad looked at each oth­er in hor­ror. Grand­ma jumped up and turned the radio up only to hear it broad­cast at that exact moment

The body of a woman killed in the head on col­li­sion on the F6 Free­way today has been iden­ti­fied as Cather­ine Frances Hon­ey, 25 of Jam­beroo”……………………

Mum Screamed, Dad placed his head in his hands and dropped to the floor rock­ing, no no no, Grand­ma sat there with her mouth open in shock.

This has been the hard­est Blog I have ever writ­ten. I promised all year I would write this event today on the anniver­sary of my sis­ters death, the 16th of Novem­ber. Today the emo­tion has run free and I have reliv­ed those events as if they were only yes­ter­day. The pain is as strong as it was then. The tear­ing apart. The nev­er get­ting to say good­bye. But I like to think I did say good­bye that morn­ing. I had told her my hope and dreams and plans of the future, we had talked, we had said sor­ry, we had rec­on­ciled our child­hood, we were adults. One with a path that’s was trag­i­cal­ly cut short in her prime, and one whose live was about to change for­ev­er that day.

now I have to go out­side and smell the ros­es… and remem­ber my but­ter­fly.. my sis­ter.. the gold­en pure one…

R.I.P. Cathy 16.11.88
The lion sleeps tonight