In Memory of Rosalie Zill 7/1/1931-4/14/2011

“Hello?”

Her voice is tired and it sounds like I’m interrupting something important, but I know that she likes getting phone calls.

“Hi, Grandma!” 

“Oh, hi princess!”

She immediately perks up and I wince at that term of endearment. She’s the only person I let call me that.  

I started to write this about a week before my grandma died. It’s sad to think I’ll never hear “Hi princess!” in her warbly little voice again.

She was the last link my brother and I had to our grandparents. Losing her was hard because I got to know her better than any of my other grandparents. We talked at least once a week since I graduated from high school. Over the past seven years, I heard a lot from her. I knew she always wanted to know what it would be like to kiss Denzel Washington. I learned how different college was in her time. I got regular recaps of the Bachelor, Detroit Tigers' games, and Hallmark movies that reminded her of me. She was at the top of my list of people to call when I had exciting news. She always told me that she loved me and was proud of me.

Every spring since graduating college I visited her with my mom. This year, I visited her in the hospital after she had emergency surgery. She wasn’t doing well and it was hard seeing her there. She didn’t look like the grandma I had known for almost 25 years. A few hours before I left the hospital for the airport the doctors told my mom and me that she was dying.

As my mom and my uncle talked to the doctors in the hallway; I stayed with my grandma and fed her orange sherbet ice cream, the first food she’d eaten since before her surgery. That was the first time that week that I’d recognized the spark in her eye and realized she hadn’t lost her sense of humor; they were just buried under all the medicine and pain.

It’s hard to say goodbye, but I’m thankful I got the chance to. Another thing I learned from our many conversations is that she was excited to see my grandpa again one day. So while she never got to know what it was like kissing Denzel, I know she's more than happy with her current company.