Rose was our wonderful next door neighbor nearly 20 years ago.  We loved to visit with her to talk about gardening and her family.  Thoughts and prayers for her family.

Grandpa Bila made a request for Rose Louise to keep the family together. Her mission was taken seriously.  Wife, mother, grandmother, and aunt; she worked to ensure family connections with holidays and birthdays, especially birthday candles, turkey necks, stuffed artichokes and for Butch, nasty cardooni. She welcomed our friends into her home, and at Christmas, ensured everyone had a package to open.

Louise lived in a time significant change and innovation. She experienced the Great Depression and a trip downtown Chicago showed her soup lines. Throughout her life she was a champion of charity. She supported higher education and female independence. She received her own education in management studies. 

Born when women were beginning to vote, World War II, noting that “walls don’t just keep people out, but keep people in” and civil rights, she felt she lived at the wrong point in time, leading to conversations that confronted our social culture. She was our family matriarch, but she was her own person. She loved to be in the middle of fun. Louise was wise, responsible, and compassionate to the downtrodden. 

To know her is to know life can grow with a bit of effort, pink carnations her favorite, helping a fish to breathe to save it, communing with animals; an apology to creatures dispatched from the house. These things softened her, however, she had the hard, responsibility of outliving a child. She did not escape that burden either. 

“The Lord will never give you more than you can handle,” she would tell me. She held on to just about everything...including her feelings, her vulnerabilities...but most of all her faith.  It never wavered. 

Family together, even if separated by time and distance; this is what she would have wanted. This was her prayer. Perhaps in losing Rose Louise, our hearts will open wide and heal those divides that remain. It would be her last wish that we will continue to forgive and love after today...her mission fulfilled. 

~Infinite Love~

I married one of Aunt Louise's nephews when I was 18.  I had no idea how or if I would be accepted.  Aunt Louise treated me like a niece in all situations even before we married.  She was fun and interesting.  She worked at Foley's Department store for a long, long time it seems.  And she loved to garden.  I always admired her.  Most of all, I loved her.  Pat Hemphill Pomaro

Alzheimer's Foundation 

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Rose Louise Listi

April 11, 1920 – September 30, 2018

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