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From Simon Litherland, Oct 3rd, 2007
I suspect that most of you know Audrey from gardening, St George’s School, the National Health Service refugee program or were our neighbours.
On behalf of my brothers, I would like to ask you to think about Audrey as she was to us.
She took us shopping at Woodward’s, played the piano when she needed to restrain herself from throttling us and, I believe, purposely chose hats that made us embarrassed.
That said, expertise with mechanical devices was not her forte. Nevertheless she rose to the challenge and drove one of the largest peacetime vehicles ever made: a 1970 Dodge Coronet station wagon with over 400 horsepower. With 8 seats and enough McDonalds French Fries down between the cushions to feed the family for a week, it was generally laden with a pack of children being driven to and from St George’s School and in winters that Napoleon himself would have tried to avoid.
Of daily interest, particularly in the fall, was whether the wagon would make it past Blenheim and 33rd in the mornings. This hill, adorned at the top with a stop sign, would be the precise location that the engine would generally stall. Usually with a long line of cars in the St. George’s motorcade waiting behind. They would learn, by the beginning of November, that it was pointless to honk encouragement because there was only ever one remedy:
Mom, dressed at times in the fashion of the day, and at others in a nightgown, learnt to pop the hood of the car, take the air filter off the engine, then force a long handled comb into the butterfly valve of the carburetor. One of us, generally the oldest, would pump the gas - but not too much – while turning the ignition over. It made sitting in the front seat not just a privilege, but a responsibility.
She thrived in front of an audience.
Meals with guests were feasts: Christmas dinners were laid for 25 - including the strays my brothers and I brought home for the holidays. Dining room functions were events in which many of you have been lucky enough to participate. I can assure you that the supporting action in the kitchen was equally entertaining and sometimes more difficult to control. Indeed, some of you were kind enough to send fire extinguishers as gifts after a particularly difficult encounter with a Baked Alaska.
When sparks from the fireplace damaged the oak floor, she rented an industrial sized floor sander and sanded them away. The damage was dealt with, and the people who came in to complete the refinishing of all the floors in the house took care of the rest.
When the pet snakes escaped their cage, or rather, when the baby snakes wriggled out through the mesh and met her on the stairs, perhaps we should have known that there are no snakes in Ireland and this might have been a bit much. But she took the bull by the horns and phoned the hospital, the one and only time she ever resorted to this, to get Dad out of the operating room. Problem solved.
When we celebrated birthdays, she brought us back to earth by singing rugby songs to us, in front of all our friends.
The four of us were fairly well trained:
Each of us will always be reminded of her with a few stray thoughts:
Her friends were our friends, and our friends all knew her.
Not having her brother and sister, or her mother, close by, meant that she relied on her friends. For all of us, doing something for friends and the community has become almost as important as doing something for family.
She spent a lot of time wandering through the back yard often accompanied by a cigarette and sometimes a gin and tonic. Her life, and her plants, were never in ordered and controlled flowerboxes. She dealt with chaos: the four of us, Dad, and pets underfoot. She lived in a proper garden that appeared to be out of control, and yet could always be teased into something better.
We learned that helping was something you just did. That our door was, and always will be, open to family and friends.