To me, even though on the written page she is Anne, to me, she will forever and always be my Gammy. In the daytime, she was a teacher, sitting me down at the table with a notebook in hand, ready to help me with anything, even if she wasn’t so sure herself. In the night, when I would stay over, she was a storyteller, recounting the history of my family that seemed too hard to be said in the daylight. She recounted stories of my great-grandparents, who were Holocaust survivors from Bergen Belsen, enlightening me on the history of not just my people, but of myself as well. She taught me to be proud and fight for myself, and not let anybody treat me as less than what I was worth. She showed me art, the beauty of the world, and how I, too, can contribute to the electrifying harmony that is life. Through all of these small little teaches, the art, the history, I think what she was teaching me all this time was really what it meant to be human. The worst part about the cancer diagnosis was that I was told much after it had begun. She had kept quiet to try and protect me, but slowly I figured out as she began staying in bed more often, telling fewer stories. It was a puzzle that I figured out on my own, and she started to wear beanies in the Southern California summer, it became abundantly clear. Her illness felt like a small death each day, and every day I mourned. In her sickness, I had begun to show her art, particularly my own. I read her poetry as she had done to me, I had told her the history I was learning in school. I had learned to become the thing that inspired me to become anything in the first place. She has shaped the resilience of my education in a variety of ways. For instance, I have always battled depression, even since I was extremely young. It is a battle I fight every day and it is an almost Sisyphean journey. What Gammy has taught me though was to keep going, to experience the beauty of life, to live to see history play itself out. She used to read me a poem, “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, which I remember her reading to me ever since I was in elementary school. I have it pinned up beside my bed now, and I always make sure to read the last lines, which state, “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul”. My dream is to become an English or History professor so I can make people feel the way my Gammy did when she taught me. In her passing, I have been motivated to continue to persevere through my mental illness and to see through with my goals, for both me and her. It is just another way in which we will be intertwined forever, and to me, the ultimate way for me to tell her that I love her.