At 9:30 pm, she would finally sit down in her favourite chair in the living room to read the newspaper or watch a little television. But within minutes, the paper would fall across her chest and her eyes would be closed.
Her children would laughingly call her, Mom! Mom, you're missing the movie! She would open her eyes and sit up, replying,No, I am not, I am watching it. They'd teasingly ask her to prove it by telling them what it was about, and she would invariably cite the opening scene.
As the movie ended, the children would waken her again and amusingly nudge each other as she agreed with them about what a good movie it had been. Then, the children would go off to bed but, she would go back to the kitchen to prepare things for the morning.
There were five children in her house and always two or three young university students who were either relatives or the children of friends from the small communities around the island. Like Grand Central Station, there was always someone going or coming, rushing or preparing, playing or talking, reading or discussing. -And through it all filtered Myrtle's laughter.
It would come at the end of a story about her mother's annual trips from Grates Cove to the city to shop for a new hat, and her father's amusement at the entire procedure. It would come while reminiscing about a one-room schoolhouse. In the photographs that were neatly attached to the pages of the albums she started when she got married, her laughter could be felt- in candid shots of building a summer house, showing off a new car, wearing a neat apron in the kitchen or posing in a stylish suit or dress with her long brown hair swept up on the sides.
As her children left home, she cried, and it would be many years before the laughter fully returned. Yet it did.
It would come easily, when telling how her husband would act when he saw how many lilacs she had cut off the trees and placed in vases around the house. You would hear it, as she opened the door to friends coming for dinner or just dropping by. It would make you smile, when it came hesitantly as she laid dish after dish on the table Christmas Day. And it would make you cry, when it came silently through a beaming smile, when her children came home to visit.
In later years, in the smaller house built for retirement, in the small community of Carmanville, there was lots of time to watch a movie from beginning to end. And, although the telephone calls to her children brought many familiar voices to their ears -it was the sound of their mother's laughter, as they hung up the phone, that echoed through their thoughts and sang them off to sleep.
Myrtle Tippett, in her 89th year, left our world on November 9th, 2015. She now resides in the hearts of her Daughter, Eve (Avrum) Richler; Sons, John (Linda) Tippett and Wade Tippett; Sisters, Joyce (Clarence) Noseworthy, Minnie Winsor, Marcie Meadus. and Harriett Hauger; Grandchildren, Nancy, Sean (Tammy), Travis, Leon and Nicolle.
She was the loving wife of the late Eric Baxter Tippett, Mother to the late Carl (Pat) and Robert Tippett and Dear Sister to the late Carrie Kelland, Jack (Phyllis) and Wallace Lambert and Phyllis Meadus. She leaves many memories with special nieces and nephews, Doris Westlund, Eric (Norma) Tippett, Edna (Robbie) Blackwood, Louise (Cliff) Mouland, Carson (Georgiana) Lambert and Brenda (Walt) Pelley; and, many other nieces, nephews, friends and family too numerous to list but not forgotten.

A Memorial Service will be held in the Chapel of Carnell's Funeral Home on Freshwater Road, St. John's on Saturday, November 14th, 2015 at 11 am, followed by a reception at Carnell's.
As an expression of Sympathy, donations may be made in her memory to the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Fund.