Somehow, he always knew what to say, just what I needed to hear at that moment to make my worries or pain disappear

I place the picture in a small frame and sit in down near my Shabbos candles. Every time I light, I can look at the photo of where Zeidy and I are sitting next to each other on his bed, and I can remember with love the last smile we shared.

When I was growing up, I was scared of my Zeidy. He’d reprimand us for making noise or making a mess. I don’t think I’d ever seen him smile. He had criticisms of this or that about us kids, and his booming voice would rise when we misbehaved.

I understood the reason for this tough nature. My grandfather was a Kindertransport child, ripped away from his mother at the age of 12. He and his 13-year-old brother packed a small bag and bid their mother farewell, not knowing if they’d ever see her again.

When my Zeidy started to cry, his older brother reprimanded him. “We must be men now. We’re going off on our own and we need to be strong. Men don’t cry.” I think that moment must have had a deep effect, as I rarely saw emotion from him, aside from anger.

My grandparents moved to Israel before I was born but would travel back to the States quite regularly. As we got older, they aged as well, and the time between visits would stretch longer and longer. When I flew off to seminary, I knew I had to visit, and started going for Shabbos.

In their beautiful stone home among the winding narrow streets of the Old City, I began to see a different side of Zeidy. He was stubborn and black-and-white in his thinking. The “Hashem tells us what to do, and we do it, no questions asked” type.

But I was also stubborn, and we’d talk for hours. Once, after a long conversation, he began laughing and remarked, “I never thought I’d meet someone more stubborn than me!”