Daphne Ezekiel Rosehill

I never met Daphne, but I only know her through her mother’s comments about her. She seems to have been an exceptional, brilliant, courageous and caring person. The world is surely a darker place without her. I know how much her mother loved her, and my husband, Eugene, and I are so sorry for your unimaginable loss. May her memory be a comfort to her mother and everyone else who loved her.
Sincerely,
Lisa and Eugene

Zekey sweet Zekey. Thinking about family dinners with you on the other side of this brownstone. The flower garden I planted between our bedroom windows continues to bloom. Having my first egg cream with you & your Dad at the bar at Eisenbergs. Thanksgivings delivered from Sarges. Taking you to Trash & Vaudville for your first pair of leather pants to wear for your school rock show. How loud you used to play with your rock band. Everyone had big hair. Your legendary bar-mitsva at the HardRock in NYC. It was the epitome of cool. The 19th st elementary school still makes me think of you. Romeo & I walk by it everyday. Packing you off for sleep away summer camp. Making peanut blossom cookies in the kitchen with you for your Dad. How much you loved your cats Ulysses & Calypso. You & Ollie had a special connection. We were together when Anna Nicole Smith died & when Heath Ledger died. Moments in history sealed with a memory. You were in that legendary school class during 9 11. You lived a remarkable life & were loved by so many. I said Happy Birthday to you this week out loud in my apt . I wish I would have called you. I see Ollie kissing you hello at the rainbow bridge. Sleep tight sweet prince. Love, Miranda

There are no words that could do justice to the meaning that Daphne held for so many of us. Not to the admiration we felt for her for as long as we were blessed and privileged to know her. Not to the perpetual disbelief at our luck that we landed a spot in the orbit of the one and only Daphne Ezekiel Rosehill. And not to the joy, ingenuity, curiosity, brilliance, generosity, care, and love that she poured into each moment she touched, painting it with her radiance of heart and mind. 

It’s fitting that Daphne’s middle name, her first name at birth, traces to the prophet Ezekiel, whose teachings and insights conveyed a humanity’s worth of wisdom, and her chosen first name comes from the nymph who outsmarted Apollo by transforming into a laurel tree that symbolized change, beauty, and eternal love. Whether observing Daphne absorb months’ worth of a subject in a matter of minutes or pursue the intimate journey of self-actualization — whether witnessing her respond to unfairness with forgiveness and grace or revel in her achievements with humility and anticipation — whether realizing she picked a favorite soul food spot in Harlem for dinner just after she’d begun to keep kosher or seeing her buttress optimism that global darkness and discord are sorry forces that wouldn’t stop her from one day running national security, Daphne mystified me constantly. I always wanted and will always want to be like Daphne. Remarkably, Daphne is the coolest person, with the most honorable character. Effortlessly popular, effortlessly charismatic, and effortlessly magnetic, Daphne’s humanity, her self-respect, and her respect for others never buckled. She drew hard lines where it mattered, yet she charmed the socks off just about anyone who crossed her path. Everywhere and every time, Daphne was luminous, principled, and alive. Everything I had hoped to give through my side of our friendship came with knowing it would only ever be a fraction of what she gave from hers.  

Daphne was the first person to teach me about hospitality and how to treat your guests, stocking her bedrooms and bathrooms, as a teenager, with things she didn’t want or need — but that someone else with other wants, or needs, or interests, might. Daphne established the standard I’d use to seek, and be, a partner. And before, during, and in the years thereafter, she taught me how to be a more decent person and a better friend. All throughout, Daphne empowered and motivated me to embrace my various and often conflicting interests, a difficult thing to do when contemporary society seems to reward single-mindedness, rote automation, and subservience without question. She sometimes did so explicitly — entertaining my random thoughts or streams of consciousness at odd hours about strange things — and sometimes implicitly, by living her truth as a person of the Renaissance, and with a Renaissance woman like that, you just can’t help but want to be in the salon. When I would seek her advice, knowing she’d suspend all judgment and instead surgically problem-solve, I sometimes joked I should pay her — enough with the pro bono — but that joke was silly, because her clarity is priceless. Insightful, reliable, encouraging, and wickedly sharp from the academic to the humorous to the bleak, Daphne is a whole universe. Like her presence, her imprint on each of us is vast, etched through her pure and unbridled love that will always shape how we live.

It will take a long time for me to truly internalize the schism that Daphne’s passing has spurred. When I think about the future, I think of filling that tear with trees — a tree for her in Israel, a tree for her everywhere and every time like the trees of delight and resilience she planted all over our lives. She lived like both of her namesakes: ethically, bravely, and dignified. If each of us had an olive to mark every instance and every corner of the world in which we ever said, “I have a friend… Daphne…,” we’d all be swimming in liquid gold. So beloved, Daphne enriched our lives in one more way: as a result of who she was, and by granting us the opportunity to love her so much, we each garnered a depth of connection that not all people experience. To love Daphne, who travailed this Earth upright and blameless, kind and virtuous, gentle and giving, is to feel as much love as a person possibly can. To mourn her is to break deep in your bones. I hope to see Daphne in the dew of blooming flowers, to hear her in the chirping of cageless birds, and to honor her by building discipline in three things that she did, among much more, inspirationally well: living authentically, keeping my commitments, and embracing uncertainty with courage. Daphne’s life was a gift, marked by presence of spirit, strength of will, and an endless well of water for us in her garden. זִכְרוֹנָהּ לִבְרָכָה

Although I never met the brilliant Daphne in person, I felt that I knew her through her loving and devoted mother and my dearest friend Nancy.
Sending healing thoughts, love and light to Nancy and her family and all Daphne’s friends and extended family.
Let Daphne’s memory always be a blessing
Sincerely
Caroline Medlen