The Requiem Mass for Lis de Groot was celebrated at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church on Thursday, 13 March 2025. Her son Jack de Groot, on behalf of his siblings Peter, Andy, Kate and families, reflected on Lis’ life, loves and conversations.
As we all observed Mum was in the Church for the beginning of her Requiem Mass. There is always a first time for everything. After at least 60 years of being always late for Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, we thought we should guarantee that she be in time for the celebration. This funeral Mass is the time for all of us to give thanks to the wonderful Mum, Mamma/Grandma, and great grandmother that Lis has been. There are also nieces, nephews, and cousins with whom Mum delighted in being a rich part of their lives.
Lis de Groot was a conversationalist. Mum never suffered from having an unspoken thought. She waxed lyrical about the lost art of conversation and waged a one-woman war to keep it alive. She was great at monologue, good at dialogue, and really on her game when there was polylogue. The multitude of conversations around the dinner table gave her the opportunity to jump from one to the other. It was breath-taking to observe. Mum had an amazing memory for people, historical events, literary references. But if she did get it wrong, she would not let the truth get in the way of a good story. Conversation is connection. And Mum knew it. She put people at ease because she would always bring in the shy or hesitant and engage people. It was her generosity in conversation that made her such good company.
Mary Elisabeth McGalliard would love to have been a member of European royalty and nobility. She was just missing the paperwork and bloodline. Mum loved her European royals. She loved their homes, their garden, their relationships, legal or otherwise, and their quirks. She had the tastes of a well-born aristocrat, and she was also a 20th Century aesthete. She owned her first Peugeot in the early 1970s, and Fiona now drives her last Peugeot. She was a classy dresser with a wonderful taste in clothes, having sewed many of her own, based on Vogue designs. She loved George’s. I am sure she was the advisor for Dad’s indulgence in Zegna suits. There was a lovely dalliance in all this. She wore these most wonderful ruby red patent leather shoes to Dad’s funeral, knowing he would have loved them.
Her love of books and reading is an extraordinary gift she has passed on through the generations. Lis was eclectic in her tastes but stopped short of the modern era of fiction unless it was crime. She loved Agatha Christie. As her memory began to fail at times, she said it made rereading Agatha Christie more rewarding as she had forgotten who the murderer was.
Lis liked facts – history, and history of art, architecture, gardening and gardeners, religion and foreign cultures, literature. Her fortnightly library haul was rich and varied and often quite heavy to carry. She loved knowing stuff, protocol, manners, the right way to do things, trivia. Mum’s love of history also drew her to historical fiction. Her memory was like a steel trap. Lis could still quote vast tracts of poetry and literature until her last days. She once told Kate she survived being at home raising kids by propping a book up on the kitchen table and reading whilst feeding the current toddler. When we were older it was the case that after reading the paper in bed over breakfast, she would pick up her book. She was contented during Covid because she had her library of books to provide company.
She is credited for introducing Harry Potter to the grandkids. She always gave excellent books. Madeleine said, “visiting bookshops with her was always great because she supported us reading so much that you know she’d be happy to buy you something.” And Claire recalled, “her love of reading – books on every topic in the house. The encyclopaedias always came out during dinner discussions to settle a debate or question.”
There is another way of seeing all this brilliance. Madeleine described it as, “Mamma showed us that it was cool to be interested and clever in things, it was cool to be knowledgeable and smart. She also did not force her interests and supported whatever we were interested in.”
She had brains, with extraordinarily absorbative capacity. Even when Kate and Andy were helping draw up her advanced care directive, when asked what was important and gave her quality of life, she said, after family, it was reading. If she could no longer read, she did not think life was worth living. She was desirous of reading until the last day.
Mum had a fantastic ability for friendship, and she loved her friends, and they loved her. There are so many, and we know that they will be making her welcome in heaven. Zoe and Joe Sullivan – bridesmaid and groomsman at their wedding – as well as Elaine Dillon, Nona and Peter Willis, Kevin and Liz Owen, Marie and Ted Ryan to name a few. What they all had in common was their intelligence, wit, kindness and most importantly their faith.
And she kept discovering and making new friends with people who came into her life. She developed a wonderful friendship with Angela who provided care for Mum at home. Mum loved roses and gardening. She was still recently able to visit nurseries with Angela and pile new plants onto her walker. She became close to, and fond of Laura, her physiotherapist, and even in the last months of her life she was able to show her charm, engaging smile, kindness, and generosity to the carers at St Vincent’s in Kew.
Of course, there is the most amazing friendship with Ray, her husband. Dad knew her to be his greatest friend – the only rose in his garden.
There were animal friends as well. She had a deep love of animals. Wonderfully named cats, Humphrey the Budgie and Monty, the Golden Retriever.
Part of friendship for Mum is hospitality. It was the expression of love of friends and family. Cooking was an art. European chefs and their cooking were her reference. She was a gifted cook. The food was central and yet hospitality was the performance before, during and after with shopping at the Camberwell and Victoria Markets; the table setting with the right linen, the best crockery and crystal, the vases of flowers from her garden and candles. She even taught the carers the importance of a properly set table until her last days at Birdwood Street.
Mum sat at the head of the table. She held court and she engaged in protocols which are peculiar and legendary amongst the grandkids. Bella recalled how many times she would raise her glass in a single meal (before AND after) each sip. She once counted at least fifteen across one dinner.
Mum was up for the challenge of going out and helping others to be practitioners of hospitality. She loved helping with the parish refugee committee and visiting the families as they moved into their first homes in Australia. She enjoyed volunteering with Elaine at La Verna. She was a diligent archivist at Xavier. For decades she volunteered at the Jesuit Mission Maytime Fair. She had great affection for the women of Genazzano, becoming President of the Alumnae and Chair of the history committee.
Her professional work with Dad in animal radiotherapy stimulated her mind and her ability with the clients: veterinarians across the state as well as owners of thoroughbred horses and stud cattle. Her fervour for country life stayed with her. She and Dad relished how their work took them all over Victoria to treat horses, cows, cats, and dogs. She loved the muster dogs and the good mousers. They went to a kind of extreme country life when soon after getting married they drove a truck to the Northern Territory where they lived and worked for six months in the evocatively named Rum Jungle. It sounded to us like something out of a Joseph Conrad story. Living in a double length tent, Mum said Dad carried her to bed each night as the dirt floor was alive with spiders – we imagined them to be the size of dinner plates.
She enjoyed being a Catholic. She was proud of her Presbyterian Dad and saddened by the fact that her Mum and Dad had to be married in the sacristy and that the Church had not welcomed this beautiful man into the Catholic community just as he was. For her, Catholicism was shaped by the intellectual traditions. For more than 30 years, she read The Tablet cover to cover and loved its reviews. She had little time for pious religiosity. Mum was very much shaped by the Catholic world of Melbourne. She had a gift for the discernment of ideas and approaches that would give life. Her many friendships with members of religious orders, her deep love of her Dominican uncle Frank; and the women who taught and shaped her – the FCJs – gave her the ability to find the best for the prudential application to her faith. Enhanced even more by their presence at Mum’s table, the parish priests of Deepdene were men she enjoyed listening to and talking with as well as drinking their single malts after counting the collection – one of them did say to me she was better at the single malts than the counting.
Even the difficult and challenging stuff for a Catholic she did not shy away from and integrated into her faith without judgment. Such as her presence to Fiona and me when we suffered miscarriages. It bought out her own unresolved grief from when she and Dad had to privately suffer the death of their twins whom she had delivered. Mum did not have the benefit of mourning her twins in public, but her experience enabled her to show wonderful and practical compassion for us. Expressing emotions was not easy for her and yet she could do it in the toughest of moments. I know her faith enabled and challenged her to be this woman of compassion. Faith was the bedrock for her that gifted her with strength, resilience, and hope.
Mum began her day with prayer and meditation (before reading). Her beloved Madonna magazine and Bible were her closest bedside companions which she consulted for her daily readings. For her to live her last days in the care of Mercy and St Vincent’s nursing and pastoral care, seemed a fitting place to be.
She loved being part of a clan and recounted the family histories of her family and Dad’s frequently. It began with her own parents and siblings Andrew and Ann. She liked telling the story of the many towns they lived in. In Swan Hill she went to a one-room primary school where all fifteen students, spanning grade one to six, sat together. She recalled sometimes going to school in a pony trap. She liked the uniqueness that came with the McGalliard brand. She loved the extended families of cousins. She was proud of them all.
As a Mum – she was proud of us. She showed up and supported all of us in whatever we were doing. As a grandmother, she enthusiastically went to Raymond and Henry’s Scout “Gang” shows; buying Fiona’s paintings; asking Mick about the footy scores when she really had no idea or interest in footy; and attending Maddy’s worst ever piano recital. It was unwavering support and genuine love and delight in all of us, the grandkids, and the great grandkids. There is a beautiful story of Claire’s daughter, Leonore being bought from Paris to meet Mum for the first time last October. Kate was taking photos of Mum looking at the 5-month-old Leonore and asking Mum to look towards the camera. Mum replied “not on your life” as she gazed intently and only at Leonore. The interest, the curiosity of Mamma once more besotted by the other in her life.
Mum would finish every call and every visit with her own distinctive goodbye, “Tata for now” she would say. As she enjoys her conversations with her creator, her friends, and her Ray, I conclude “Lis, Tata for now.”
By: Jack de Groot
19 Brenbeal Street, Balwyn VIC 3103
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Yolanda Torrisi says:
Loved reading this eulogy. Despite never meeting Lis, I feel this sense of finally having got to know someone special in the parish. A truly lovely tribute.