The Amazing Audrey

After six of the most horrendous weeks I can possibly imagine, my amazingly tough mother, Audrey Joan Cutts Mendenhall, passed away on February 20, 2012. The determination that defined her final struggle characterized her entire life. She did everything on her own terms and she never let anyone else's expectations limit her. She spent her entire life defying odds and expectations. Life handed her more obstacles and low blows than any five people should ever face, but every time something was denied her or taken from her, she took stock of what remained, dreamed new dreams, and started fresh.

Audrey Joan Cutts, December 1931.

Audrey was a bright and willful child, the youngest of six born to Scottish-Canadian immigrants Fred and Christina Cutts. She was the “bonus child,” born after all the others were grown or nearly grown.  She was the little princess and she didn’t mind capitalizing on it, although she was by nature a tomboyish, lively girl who loved to spend time with her big brother, Fred, swimming in the Atlantic, sailing, running, dancing, and singing. 

The face of a determined child

Before entering the sixth grade, the parents of children in the Boston school system in the 1930s and 40s had to decide the educational fate of their children, which provided the foundation for the rest of their lives.  Academically promising children whose parents could pay for college entered the college-bound program. The rest of the boys learned a trade or prepared for a career in business. Girls received basic classical educations, along with home economics and secretarial training. As a very young child, Audrey dreamed of becoming an attorney, but in 1940, there were only about 10,000 attorneys in the country and fewer than 150 of them were women. Audrey's blue collar, Presbyterian, practical parents didn't even send their sons to college: they sure weren't going to send their baby daughter and they found the notion of becoming a lawyer to be laughable.  Audrey lost that battle and never got over her hurt and disappointment. Decades later, she was still angry that she had been denied the chance to follow her dream of becoming a lawyer.

Audrey at 17

Audrey's parents were determined that their wild child would find a nice, stable boyfriend after school, marry, and settle down. She had other ideas. She still wanted to go to college. As a junior in high school in 1947, she was on a homecoming date with a beau in New York City and was approached by a representative of the Warner Bra Company who asked her if she would be interested in working as "an industrial bra model." Warner was the leading manufacturer of brassieres at the time and was attempting to improve upon the recently introduced alphanumeric system of sizing for bras. Because she was considered to have an ideal figure, they offered Audrey enough money to pay for the first year of college for one season of modeling "test bras."

Audrey the hottie!

Following graduation, Audrey had a hard time getting into college, largely because in 1948, America’s colleges were flooded with men returning from World War Two, using their GI benefits to advance their educations. She did manage to get into Boston College, but found she had to spend the entire year taking classes she should have had in high school. Discouraged, she moved to Washington, DC, where jobs were plentiful, in the hope of earning enough to return in a year or two. She moved in with her older, married sister in Northern Virginia and got a job at the Navy Annex in Arlington. 

Through her brother-in-law, she met our father, Richard Mendenhall, a handsome military engineer ten years her senior. They married in January 1952 and Audrey immediately became pregnant.

Audrey lived the typical housewife life for the next several years, keeping house and raising me from 1952 to 1956. During this time, she also learned to make pottery.  She was so good at it that after only a couple years, she opened her own studio in our basement and held classes for adults and children. Unhappy with commercially available glazes, she began to experiment with other formulas, which also lent her creations a unique and easily identifiable look. 

Then, in quick succession, my brother, Kris, and sister, Kippy, arrived. Audrey had her hands full, with three small children, but she still managed to be the good wife and mother while also running her pottery studio. She was also active in our church  and community and was the head of the local Republican Women’s group. In addition to all those responsibilities, we served as an official State Department “host family” for visiting diplomats who wanted to understand American culture. Although we hosted people from many cultures, the bulk of our “customers” came from Japan, Germany, or France because my parents spoke those languages. There was tremendous pressure on Audrey to maintain a gracious and restful environment for our guests while tending to the needs of three very active children. We were not a well-off family at all – we had a tiny house and scavenged furnishings in what was then the boondocks of Alexandria, Va – but Mom made every guest feel like they had received the best that America could offer. (And, boy, did she made us toe the line! We had the manners of little princes and princesses, thanks to that darn program!)

All that came to an end one icy November evening in 1960, when an auto accident nearly killed her and left her – six months pregnant – with a shattered spine. Told she would have to lose the baby (who is now 51 years old) and would  never walk again, she volunteered to be the first human recipient of an as-yet untested procedure in which surgeons removed her three demolished vertebrae and  crushed discs and replaced them with bones and discs from sheep. After nearly three agonizing years in traction and therapy, she took her first steps in 1963.

Photo from Audrey's first real estate license

During those years, Audrey could do little but examine her life and she realized that she still resented not having the chance to become an attorney. She believed it was too late for that dream, but she decided that the life of the typical 1960s housewife and mother was not for her. She wanted a to be a career woman.  So, to the astonishment of everyone and to the dismay of her family, she announced that she intended to obtain her real estate broker’s license. In no time, she was a licensed real estate salesman.  After three years learning the business, she got her broker’s license and opened Showcase Realty, the first woman-owned  real estate brokerage in the Washington, DC area.

After six years, Audrey sold the business and moved with the three youngest kids to the Delmarva peninsula (I was in college in Texas). Delmarva was ripe for development and 

At the airstrip at Bayview

Audrey had ideas about how she could be part of that.  She also hoped that a move to the country would be good for the kids. Back then, Delmarva was one of the most insular places in America. There were about six last names. “Westerners” were not welcome except as tourists.  Anyone from the city who intended to break into the tightly controlled world of Eastern Shore real estate development would have had a difficult time in 1970. A divorced working mother from D.C. who intended to do “man’s work” was anathema. Anybody else would have given up and gone home after six months of the hazing she endured, but Audrey stuck it out. She first moved the family into an abandoned – and barely habitable – farmhouse adjacent to an 800 acre property she intended to turn into a planned community called Bayview Estates. 

She needed to build a model home – and get the family out of the dangerous farmhouse – but she lacked the cash to do so. One day, she saw a farmer dismantling old chicken incubators, which were made from 10-inch thick solid redwood panels. She bought those redwood panels and, with the help of the few local people who would speak to her, she designed and built “the chicken incubator house” for less than $12,000.                                                  

During the next dozen years, in addition to Bayview, she developed or helped to develop some of the most significant communities in that area, including Hidden Harbor and Mystic Harbor.  Remembering the difficult time she had trying to obtain education beyond high school, she played an important role in establishing Wor-Wic Community College in 1975. Audrey made powerful friends and powerful enemies, but she proved that she was a force to be reckoned with and she succeeded in spite of herculean efforts to make her fail.

In the end, it was the banking industry that brought her down. In the  late 1970s, Audrey began selling log homes as affordable housing alternatives. After building one herself, she was convinced that these homes provided the best combination of sturdiness, beauty, individualization, and economy for those seeking to build their own homes. Unfortunately, as homeowners made deals then found themselves unable to secure funding to pay for the homes, Audrey got caught in the middle and went bankrupt. In 1979, she left Delmarva with nothing and moved to Florida to begin again.

Selling timeshares in Delray Beach

 While enduring some tough years selling time shares, Audrey encountered many doctors, engineers and other professionals, who were looking for investment properties. She realized that many of these folks had no business acumen whatsoever. She heard them tell of their unmanageable staffs and bemoan the fact that they had no idea what happened to most of the money they made. She decided to develop a company that would offer business management services to this clientele and partnered up with others  who could get the business off the ground. 

This new business, TriMega, took off like wildfire. However, disaster struck again when Audrey was attending a medical conference in Atlanta to promote the business. While checking out of her hotel, she tripped over some luggage that someone had placed behind her, fell on the marble floor, and shattered her back again. This time the surgery went very badly. Audrey could not walk, was in agonizing pain, and to top it off, her health insurance company dropped her and her business partners stole all her assets, leaving her bankrupt again, penniless, and unable to work. She came by air ambulance to Virginia to receive additional surgery and to recover. After two long years, she was once again ambulatory, although she would live the rest of her life in extreme pain.

During that long recovery time, she once again reflected on her life. This time, she realized that her fierce ambition had undermined her personal relationships and that many of the tenets by which she had been living her life – and many of the associations she had made – were no longer compatible with who she wanted to be. She resolved to put her children and friendships first and to become “a kinder, gentler” version of herself.  To help her deal with the deep depression she was in, and to pass the hours alone while I was working, she decided to learn to paint. By doing so, she reignited her earlier artistic passions and discovered that she had a wonderful talent for painting.  She began to paint morning, noon, and night, in spite of her pain. It was therapy and a crash course in technique all at once.

Very early oil painting: Mabry Mill, VA

First watercolor

Audrey had always wanted to travel and had never had the opportunity to do so.  The happiest I have ever seen her was in the spring of 1988. For her birthday the previous December, I told her I would take her on a trip to anywhere in the world she wanted to go. Though I had visions of Africa, New Zealand, or at least Florence or Prague, she wanted to go to England, so off we went, for a two-week, whirlwind tour of England, Wales, and Scotland. I’m telling you, it was better than taking a kid to Disneyland (another destination she loved). She was an intrepid traveler, although the currency exchanges baffled her, and she tried to make friends with every person we met – which is a daunting task among the characteristically reserved British. She got along great with the rowdy Yorkshiremen, though, and it was easy to see what part of England HER family was from!

Eventually, Audrey returned to Florida, hoping to support herself as a painter and crafter. 

Her work was shown in several galleries and at numerous craft shows and although she was officially a “starving artist,” she was reasonably happy, living with one son and near other relatives. She invented several painting techniques and popularized “sand paintings,” three dimensional paintings that incorporated beach sand and other materials into the canvas.

Early sand painting

She wasn’t feeling well, though, and was plagued by health problems. She had a heart attack, badly controlled high blood pressure, and other ailments. A vascular problem destroyed one kidney.  She also had strange visual symptoms, severe headaches, and dizzy spells that doctors put down to her high blood pressure.

In early 1998, Audrey was told that she had three giant inoperable aneurisms in her brain that would definitely kill her in the near future and should have killed her already. The exact words of her neurologist were, “Go home, drink, smoke, take drugs if you are so inclined, enjoy yourself, and prepare to die.” This was not her plan, so she enlisted my help to locate other options. Amazingly, we discovered that the National Institutes of Health was conducting a trial at the University of Florida, six hours away, that explored surgical alternatives to repair giant cerebral aneurisms. Audrey was a perfect candidate for the surgery.

The doctors made it plain that the procedure was extremely risky and she had little chance of surviving, but she signed up anyway and had the surgery in early June 1998.  One of the anerysims could not be repaired, but the two most dangerous ones were. After a week in recovery, she was ready to go home. She danced with the surgeon in the waiting room while my brother fetched the car – and promptly collapsed in a coma from cerebral vasospasms, a rare complication of brain surgery. The effect of the vasospasms was identical to a stroke and it left her blind and deaf on the left side and completely unable to speak. The professional talker was struck dumb.

Another year spent in rehab, learning to speak again.  Another year of frustration and anguish.  Although she was as sharp as ever mentally, she was never able to regain her speech fully. It was a mental struggle to formulate every word and thoughtful listeners had to spend a bit of time learning her new patterns. Nothing hurt or frustrated Audrey more than to see that others in the conversation were talking around her or not listening when she tried to speak. Although she boiled inside, outwardly she was nearly always gracious and accepting.

She discovered that she could no longer paint the way she had done before, both due to diminished strength and because with only one eye, she had no depth perception. She suffered another deep depression, but pulled herself out of it and began to experiment with other painting and craft techniques.   

She began to spend more time up north, living either in Virginia with me and Nikki or in Maryland with my brother Kerry and his wife. Although the cold bothered her, she found the environments more stimulating and she made many new friends. She also loved having kids and animals around her. She rediscovered her playful side.

Life went on that way for a while, with Mom splitting her time among all the kids, but eventually feeling most at home back on the Maryland eastern shore. She was aging, but gracefully, still painting and crafting, and still telling entertaining stories – to those who took the time to listen to her.

At Christmas 2006, we had another scare, when she suffered another major stroke while at my house in Virginia. After a couple months in the hospital and another short stint in at-home rehab, though, she was raring to go again.

She dreamed of entering her paintings in a juried show – something she had never tried in the past – so in 2008 she applied to Arts Alive, a large, competitive show in Ocean City, MD. She was accepted and could not have been more thrilled. This was the big time. Other artists warned her that the judging in the show was not fair and open: winners all tended to be either members of the local Art Guild or students of the judges. Audrey didn’t care so much about that – she just wanted people to see her paintings (and buy some!) She absolutely adored interacting with the people who stopped by her booth!

 At the end of the show, we were all thrilled to learn that one of her paintings had been selected “Audience Favorite.” That was the award she wanted. Of all the entries of every type – painting, photography, sculpture, jewelry, fabric art, and others – the people, the real people, had chosen one of her works as their favorite! The judges could all stick it, as far as she was concerned, but she wanted to appeal to real people. She also had great success with her sales in a year when people were not inclined to buy.

The Peoples' Choice!!

Once again, however, she was starting to feel bad. Her remaining kidney was ailing, because of the high blood pressure and some other vascular troubles. She also suffered from COPD, which was getting much worse. She was independent, but slowing down. Audrey lived with Kerry and his wife and they were planning to move to Colorado. She traveled to Colorado with them and loved it, but the thin air made her suffer. She knew she could not move with them. She insisted that she would be fine alone, but in July 2009, Kippy and her husband moved in with her and Nikki and I moved down the road, just to provide backup.

First guests in my new house in Maryland

Good timing, as it worked out, because in October 2009, Audrey collapsed with what turned out to be a very large abdominal aortic aneurysm that required immediate emergency surgery.  The risks were huge, but the alternative was unthinkable.

Although the surgery was a success, Audrey suffered dreadful complications, including an inability to revive from the anesthesia, a burst spleen and another bleed that required two more surgeries. She spent nearly five months on a ventilator, with a gastric tube, on dialysis, either unconscious or suffering from “ICU psychosis.”

We took this photo because she looked so GOOD!

Absolutely no one thought she would survive. Absolutely everyone was wrong. In February 2010, she was discharged to rehab. By March, she was off the vent and G-tube. She even got off dialysis, but a severe infection sent her briefly back to the ICU and dealt the final blow to her kidney.

From then on, she was forced to endure dialysis, a fate that no one wants. In May, she was discharged from rehab to a standing ovation from the entire staff. She came home and was recovering well, when a severe bout of pneumonia sent her back to the ICU. 

Proving she was ready to go home again!

This time, doctors were again certain she would never recover and again they were wrong. It was a long haul, but she finally came home again in July. She also developed an enormous and painful incisional hernia that we called “the baby.”

From that time on, Audrey suffered one health blow after another. Repeated bouts of pneumonia, lung fluid overload, and congestive heart failure; urinary tract infections; another aneurysm. Still, every morning she got up and did whatever she could find the strength to do. We had to watch her like a hawk because she was intent on being as independent as possible. She was in the hospital more than out, but every time she got home, she pushed herself to the limit to recover. She was doing that very thing on October 29, 2011 when she fell and broke her hip. The surgeon told her not to bother fixing it because, “You are a medical mess and you would never survive the surgery.” Her response? “Screw you, sonny. Fix the hip!” He fixed it and she was up and out of rehab in three weeks, to the amazement of everyone, especially the surgeon. We celebrated with a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my house.

Mom’s 80^th birthday was December 4 and she had made it plain that she wanted a BIG celebration. She knew only too well how many odds she had defied to reach that age and how much tougher it was getting to keep going. She wanted the whole family to come to her party and we all wanted to be there. Kerry, the baby of the siblings, was completing treatment for his own medical problem – Stage 2 throat cancer – so we delayed the party until January 14, 2012.

Audrey was excited about her party and about 2012. She was going into business with Kippy, making ornaments. She hadn’t felt this happy or productive for a long time. In a cruel twist, Audrey learned just before Christmas that she had advanced liver and pancreatic cancer that had metastacized aggessively into her already damaged lungs. Her response to this news was to grieve briefly, then shrug it off. She had a party to attend!

The party could not have been better. Eighty people braved the coldest day of the winter to be there. They came from Virginia, Florida, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, and elsewhere to help her celebrate her big day.  Those who could not come sent videotaped messages. Not only did Audrey have a blast, but every guest there was clearly having fun.  What a great time!

Audrey and BFF Ev, still gossiping!

The storyteller -- January 14, 2012

Holding court - January 14, 2012

With Kippy, Kerry and friends from dialysis

Cutting a rug with longtime friend & neighbor, Jerry

 Four days after this amazing event, Audrey went into the hospital again with a urinary tract infection and some fluid on her lungs. Over the ensuing five weeks, it became sepsis from her dialysis catheter, which required two surgeries to replace; two kinds of pneumonia; an inflamed gall bladder; and more. Every day was a horror: not just because of all the medical intrusions and painful procedures, but because of the roller coaster of hope and despair. In the morning, we would hear that things were looking great and Mom would be discharged in a couple days. By afternoon, we would get a complication or new problem. Audrey was tough as nails, as always, but she lost nearly 20 pounds and was in continual pain. 

One of the pneumonias, a particularly difficult one, just would not clear up. All the while, the cancer was spreading. Finally, even she knew she was out of options – although she was still hoping for a loophole somewhere.

Fortunately, we were able to get her home, where she continued to fight valiantly for her life, even as it became clear that she was losing. On the last day of her life, she still insisted on struggling to her feet and transferring to her wheelchair on her own. She even attempted to use her walker to get to the bathroom on her own. That was our Mom, refusing to back down, refusing to accept defeat, indomitable to the end.

Audrey made mistakes and sometimes her singlemindedness did hurt those who loved her the most. But she was a daily reminder of what any human can do if they try hard enough and if they refuse to make excuses or accept society’s limitations.  There will never be another one like her and I will always miss her impish grin, her endless creativity, and her spunky personality. Rest in peace, Mom.