A tribute to my grandmother

On Oct. 5, my grandmother Dorothy Parise, “Dodo,” passed away in her sleep. That morning, I woke up to a call from my dad. Four days later, I was on a plane back home to Chicago.

Dodo was 90 years old, but she wasn’t sick or in a nursing home; she was in great shape and lived alone in the same house since 1975. Her death was a shock, and as I’m writing this it still doesn’t feel entirely real. My extended family, scattered across the Midwest, congregated back to Deerfield, Illinois, to attend a memorial service and to clean out her one-story home.

We went to her house as soon as I got off the plane and started sorting through her things. Always the planner, Dodo had written out a sheet titled “Distribution of Things I Care About,” which carefully assigned what her children would get. At the bottom she wrote, “For the rest, decide amongst yourselves and ​be nice.”

My grandfather Donald Parise, “PopPop,” passed away in 2008, so as we cleaned out Dodo’s place, there was a plethora of mementos from both of them. I learned more about my grandparents’ lives this weekend than I had in the past 20 years. Every trinket I picked up meant something to someone in my extended family.

The grief hit me bit by bit and then all at once. All week, as I prepped to head back to my hometown, I tried not to think about her. But once the service started, I wept for an hour straight. My father delivered the eulogy and talked about how grief is really just love that is pent-up, love with nowhere to go; I had a lot of pent-up love for Dodo.

We all congregated at Dodo’s house after the service, spreading out around her backyard, eating Italian food and sharing stories. Dodo was the funniest person I’ve ever met and the most particular. She liked things the way she liked them and would not be quiet if they were not right. She drank white wine, watered down, with ice and Sweet‘N Low in it. “I like it how I like it,” she would say.

She would throw out books if she didn’t think they were good, “so no one else has to read them!” A dental hygienist, she’d write, “Don’t buy candy!” in every birthday card. Cousin Scott saw her sitting alone at a wedding once and asked if she wanted to dance: “I don’t, but I guess I will” was her reply. She swayed with him for a couple minutes before proclaiming, “That’s enough.”

I thought I knew Dodo pretty well, but I learned so much about her during the day I spent with my extended family. I learned she had been a pre-medical student in the 1940s at the predominantly male University of Illinois at the Navy Pier campus. I learned she was an avid bridge card game player. She even had custom scorecards made for her and PopPop. I learned that her parents died pretty young and that family meant everything to her.

We stayed in the backyard for hours, long enough that if Dodo had been there she would have made us all leave so she could go inside to watch “Wheel of Fortune.” My cousin Matthew teared up when he kept looking around every few minutes, thinking, “Where’s Dodo?” I had been wondering the same thing. Her presence was unmistakably there. It was really nice to have the family all together – crying, laughing, drinking and eating – but there was also an unmistakable feeling that everything was different now.

Two years ago, at my sister’s college graduation, Dodo was so proud that Madeleine had graduated summa cum laude. I joked to her that there was “no way that’s going to happen for me” and she got very serious and said, “There’s still time!”

But Dodo won’t be there for my graduation, for my wedding or my sister’s. She won’t see my cousin Lille commit to University of Illinois, her alma mater. Christmas will be tough this year.

I’d call Dodo a lot, but she liked to be called more than she liked talking on the phone. You could get her for eight minutes, if you were lucky. She’d ask about the weather and what things you were up to, but didn’t like talking about herself much. Sitting at Dodo’s house, going through her personal belongings and hearing about her life, I felt closer to her than I had in years. 

Moreover, I felt closer to my family. We were all bound together by this shared experience of knowing her, truly and deeply, and we were acknowledging that shared reality together for the first time.

I secretly love funerals. Not the actual service, but afterwards. I love gathering together with my family and being with them, singularly and fully. I love around 3 p.m. when someone runs out to get pizza and beer. I love how much love we have for each other and how it all comes out. Together, we took all the love we had displaced for Dodo and dispersed it amongst each other.

Grief has a way of bringing people together, because it’s really just love.