If my grandmother were to know that it is 12:22am and I am sitting in a room not incredibly well-lit writing about her, she would yell, “Kaitlyn, get to bed, you’re going to hurt your eyes like that!”

And even though I haven’t seen her for six years, I would likely still argue with her because when it came to stubbornness, we were each other’s match.

“Nanny, I’m fine!” I would have said. That was what I said every single time I went downstairs to get water bottles and she insisted that I use a plastic bag but I refused to just to exercise my stubbornness.

I find a way to think of her every day, without fail. When I least expect it, I will be transported again to her living room, where I would throw myself onto the couch every day after school.

Sometimes I will be in her kitchen, sitting at the table as she simply looked at me and smiled over her cup of tea. I would cross my eyes at her or roll them around, doing a relatively accurate impression of a lunatic. “Why do you keep staring at me?” I would ask. “What, I can’t look at my granddaughter?” she would respond.

Even though I see her in my mind vividly, I wish I did far more of looking over at the remarkable woman sitting beside me. The regrets I have that she, the gracious lady she was, would tell me I should not have. I would have looked up from Barefoot Contessa and watched her sleep peacefully rather than shout to disturb her from her nap; I would have demanded she tell me her theory about the game show host and the assistant twenty times more rather than tell her she was wrong.

There is a picture on my window sill that I see every day when I open my dorm room blinds where I am dressed head-to-toe in pink, (only a sight portrayed in pictures now), ready for picture day. My Nanny sits beside me looking steadily at the camera with a little smile. It’s funny; we have the same expression on our faces. We look forward. I rest my head on her chest and she has her arm around me.

Nothing will ever really change. She is here as she always was.