On Friday of last week, my brothers and I buried our mother Judy Parzen (1933-2025) at a small intimate service. On Sunday, we gathered with her extended community for a celebration of her life. Roughly 150 people came out to share our grief and the blessing of her memory. It was a wonderful event. My brothers and I all agreed: she would have loved every moment of it. Thank you to everyone who attended.
Here’s my own, personal tribute to my mom, shared on Sunday, November 16, at the Atheneum in La Jolla, California.
Thank you, brother Micah, for the wonderful tribute and warm words on a day rich with memories and emotions. I love you, man. I love both my brothers and my sisters-in-law. They’ve done an awesome job of putting today’s event together. Wouldn’t you say? Bravi!
Thank you everyone, friends and family, Judy’s community, for being here to share our grief and the blessing of her memory.
I know I’m here today to speak about our mom. But I can’t begin a tribute to her life without first mentioning her love for her dogs.
Judy loved a number of dogs over the years. And the dogs she loved were no common canines, whether sneaking out of the house and finding his own way to Bird Rock Elementary, crossing La Jolla Blvd. on his own so that he could be with her children during the school day (yes, that really happened!) or putting on his own sweater when it got cold, she loved to tell the stories of all the miraculous feats and adventures her dogs had achieved and experienced.
And let’s not forget the time that her Ronald Reagan-era Duran Duran dog Rio from the 1980s was dog-napped! Another doggy tale for generations to come!
Another thing that some of her broader circle of friends may not know about her is that Judy loved and followed the Oscars as if she were a voting member of the academy.
She loved movies and she really lived the Oscars season, watching nearly all the nominated films, discussing them with her friends, handicapping herself against the New York Times, and then throwing an intimate viewing party including dinner and wine (I know because I would provide the wine, right, Marie?).
The girls and I already miss talking with her about dogs and my movie-going career is going to be extremely challenged without her guidance.
When we do miss her, whether at dinner or on the way to school, we love to remember her by quoting her famous — at least famous in our family — “Judy-isms.”
Brilliant, sometimes punny, sometimes poetic, idiosyncratic turns of phrase that somehow always had an aphoristic aura about them.
Just a few days before she passed, she uttered one of the greatest Judy-isms of all time. No joke.
On the last visit the rabbi came to see her, she thanked him for his time and his help (he was wonderful and he was indispensable in helping our family with the burial arrangements). And as he said goodbye, she told him, “You know something? I never thought I’d learn anything useful from a rabbi!”
Even the rebbe allowed that that was one for the ages!
You all already know how much she enjoyed reading non-fiction. I don’t need to remind you of how she would literally consume 2-3 books a week. In the weeks before she died, she had begun reading the newly published 1,000-page biography of Mark Twain.
If you knew Judy, you know that she was a gourmet. It was a pastime that she and I enjoyed immensely together, whether in the fine dining restaurants that began popping up in Tijuana in the 1980s; the country taverns of Italy where she would visit me during my years there; or snagging the coolest table at New York City’s hottest new restaurant back during the decade I lived there.
In New York my old boss, the restaurateur Nicola would make the biggest fuss over “la mamma” and in Houston, Tony, my longtime client, also Italian, served her his finest Seder meal, including homemade gefilte fish and matzoh balls.
And let’s not forget the time the owner of a restaurant in Padua, Italy asked for her hand in marriage! I kid you not! It was like a scene out of Kiss Me Kate.
Speaking of Broadway, Judy was a huge fan of show tunes and musicals. She and I were so fortunate to catch so many great shows during my years in the city.
When I was 10, she took us to see A Chorus Line, here in San Diego, in its first national run. I still can’t believe I was there. And I can’t believe how much that record continued to inspire, bewitch, and thrill me. It still does today. It’s one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me.
She brought home the album and I couldn’t believe it had the word shit in it. I thought my mom was the coolest person in the world. She was.
Judy did not like cursing. She was very thoughtful and colorful in her language. But she never cursed.
She once caught herself saying “damn it!” in front of our girls when they must have been 9 or 10. She pleaded — I mean pleaded! — with the girls to forgive her. If she only knew the way their father talks! They couldn’t stop laughing. We always remember that day so warmly.
I could go on and on, with so many anecdotes, funny stories, uncanny coincidences, an unforgettable meal at the UN, running into Henry Kissinger at the Planetarium! Judy’s incredible table settings. Her art collection.
She lived a grand life and she enjoyed it thoroughly.
But the thing I think she will be remembered for most fondly was her ability to inspire those around her to grow and thrive.
A line, from a letter she sent to her cousin Sid before she was married.
“There is plenty of genius in our family,” she shared with him. “But not enough spark!”
Spark… that word echoes through her aesthetic and stylistic life, whether the famous blue stripe at Avenida Cresta or the parsley bouquet, a centerpiece for her black granite dining table for 10.
She was always looking for the spark. She inspired it in others.
I know because in recent weeks, many of you have shared cherished stories about how she inspired the spark in you.
I know because she inspired the spark in me. For sure.
Judy inspired me in another fundamental way, one that shaped my life and how I would deal with life’s unexpected challenges and adversity.
Like a bridge over troubled waters… the song she always said she wanted sung at her funeral (although she hadn’t mentioned that in many years). She was like a bridge over troubled waters.
In stormy, stormy seas — and I know that everyone here knows what I’m talking about — she was a rock. She was our rock.
And as important as it was in terms of our security and safety in growing up, it was also an inspiration. I can do this, guys. You can do this, guys. We can do this. We are going to get to the other side of this and there will be joy once we pass through these stormy seas.
I recently came across the poetry of the Hugarian-Hebrew writer and hero Hannah Senesh. I’m not joking when I say that this poem leapt from the page and sprang into my mind, filling it with memories of Judy and the waves crashing on the rocks outside her apartment at the Cove.
“To my mother”
1940
By Hannah Senesh
From where have you learned to wipe the tears,
To quietly bear the pain’
To hide in your heart the cry, the hurt,
The suffering and the complaint?:
Hear the wind!
Its open maw
Roars through hills and dale
See the ocean…
The giant rocks,
In anger and wrath it flails.
Nature all arush, agush.
Breaks out of each form and fence
From where is this quiet in your hearts
From where have you learned strength
Thank you
Do Bianchi 