Sassy Gran Doris' Passing

I've only cried twice over celebrities dying. The first time was when Tom Petty died in 2017 and just a few days ago, when I found out about Sassy Gran Doris dying.

I was laying in bed scrolling through YouTube at around 9, trying to unwind for the night. I had a video playing in the background on the app that I wasn't really that interested in when a thumbnail of Doris and a caption written across it that said, "I will miss you for the rest of my life" caught my eye.

A little voice in my head was like "no..." and raced to click on the video. As I scrolled through the comments, I realized it was real. Doris had passed away. Alone, in the dark, tears started streaming down my face until I was near sobbing. I hadn't been able to cry in a long time, but for some reason, this woman, that I'd never even met, had opened the floodgates. I left my own comment and scrolled through everyone else's comments and cried for the next hour. All of these strangers were feeling the same thing that I was about this woman that they too, only knew through a phone screen.

Doris was 96 years old when she passed and hadn't found fame until her early 90s when her grandson, Gio started posting videos of her on YouTube. The videos mainly consisted of Doris, her 70 something year old daughter, and Gio sitting in their car and talking before going to get some lunch.

Doris was so alive for someone in her 90s. She wore flawless makeup and false eyelashes, was spontaneous, and sometimes she'd even take her audience on shopping trips and show us how to dress classy on a budget. She'd always nail it. Her and her mother were the true embodiment of elegance.

I think what people loved most about Doris was how she always said what was on her mind. She never sugarcoated what she thought or how she was feeling, even if it offended someone. And that was what was so endearing about her. That was what made her so charming and that was where she got the nickname "Sassy". Some of her commentary would make me absolutely roll with laughter and then I'd lose it even more when I'd hear her grandson off screen with his absolutely maniacal laughter.

Doris and her family didn't do YouTube because they needed the money. They didn't come from money, but Gio had become wealthy in his adulthood and took care of his mother and grandmother in Los Angeles. When she was 90 years old, Doris had been living across the country, feeling increasingly lonely, spending more and more time in bed, essentially "getting ready to die" as she put it. She was in a small town, there was nothing to do, and she didn't have a lot of people to talk to.

So she called up her grandson and told him to get her out of there. She made the move across the country to LA and she started really living life again, even enrolling in dance classes. Gio started recording videos of his time with her in order to memorialize his grandmother.

When Doris spoke about leaving her abusive husband in the '50's it really resonated with people and the video went viral. She spoke candidly about him cheating on her and how she went to live in the car with her kids while she worked 3 jobs until she could finally afford a place for them. Doris was steadfast in her reasoning; "I had to leave. I had 5 kids I had to take care of." What some would have used as an excuse to stay stuck, was Doris' reason not to stay.

As I got to know Doris through her channel, I realized she had been through a lot of difficult situations in her life, but she was always true to herself and always got herself out of any situation that was a threat to her wellbeing and happiness. I think that was likely the key to her longevity.

When I found out she died, I was genuinely shocked because I thought Doris was going to live forever, or at least make it until 100. A week prior to her passing, she was riding go-karts with her grandson. She was always up to something. She was really alive, truly understanding what it was to be human.

Even when she was hospitalized a year ago because she slipped into a coma, I had no doubts she would pull through. When she did, her grandson gave her a makeover, putting on her signature false eyelashes to make her feel more like herself. And eventually her spirits were lifted and she was back to enjoying life with her family again, which according to her, included her viewers. She spent years reading each and every letter her fans sent and her son said she genuinely considered her audience to be her grandchildren and took what they had to say very seriously.

I'm not sure I looked at Doris as my grandmother, though I would have loved to have her as a real life grandmother. Whenever we get attached to celebrities or internet personalities, it's really just a projection. It's essentially a para-social relationship; a one sided relationship. I knew quite a lot about Doris but Doris knew nothing about me.

If you consume any type of media, you have para-social relationships. The reason people are attracted to certain media personalities and not others is because the people they choose to follow fill some sort of a need for them, something that isn't being met in their real life. We just project our needs onto the person's whose content we consume. And it sounds dehumanizing, but the person essentially becomes those qualities we desperately crave in order to sort of fill that void we have in our lives in the physical realm.

Despite being aware of this, I became invested in Doris' life and adventures with her daughter and grandson. For me, it was a bit of escapism watching this family have this beautiful, honest bond with one another. I didn't actually know Doris, but she represented complete freedom to me. I admired how she could so effortlessly be herself and speak her mind with such conviction. I had been working on that in my own life.

Yet I've felt a bit stalled, ever since the pandemic hit, I sort of went backwards with my own therapy and healing. In order to heal from PTSD, we need to start to form genuine human connections again. I need to get past seeing the world and the people in it as scary. To get technical about it, even if we're just watching something on a screen, our mirror neurons are activated causing us to feel genuine emotions that mirror what the other person is feeling. It's why you can watch a video of someone exercising and feel like you've just exercised yourself. When I watched Doris connect with her family, it felt as if I was a part of that, as if I was connecting with them also. Even though, I was just sitting in my bed before drifting off to sleep.

Losing Doris made me realize how much I need that connection in my life again. She became that source of connection over this past year. She was a symbol of all of the needs I've been neglecting in my real life. When Doris was in my situation, feeling lonely, spending a lot of time in bed, she changed her environment and found connection again.

I feel recommitted to my therapy and healing knowing what Doris represented to me, why I watched her. Why I felt so devastated when I heard of her passing.

In her final video, Doris' grandson asked her how she would want to be remembered when she was gone one day. Doris said that would want to be remembered for being kind and for always trying to do the right thing. I will remember her for that, but mostly, I'll remember how kind she was to herself, and I'll carry that with me as I move forward in my own life.