"Dark night, only bullets whistling across the steppe. Only the wind rattles the wires and the stars twinkle dimly." Every night from the day of my birth until the day sleep became mundane, my grandfather rocked me on his shoulder, singing these words. Тёмная ночь. Stolen from his Ukrainian village as an infant, he lived dark nights for 5 years, knowing only the fuel of his mother's milk and the cries of his neighbours, scared and entrapped in the concentration camp. And yet with such a tragic foundation, he always carried a smile. His mind was ageing physically, yes, but its core was ripe. Jokes and stories from his past he had told as though they were new. Though he had lived 82 years of endless breaths and memories, the flames of his remembrance had never perished, and those recollections continue to lay engraved with his resting soul. And though I miss the sound of his buoyant voice telling me those lines, I store his precious words in the memory he gave me. "The bushes whispered to me about you in the snow-white fields near Moscow. I want you to hear how my living voice yearns for you." Singing has been my passion since my first words, and at the other end of the hall always layed my grandfather, the wisest library I've ever known. Землянка. This was his favourite song from the time of war. He had begged for many years to hear me sing it, but my younger ignorant self deemed it 'old'. As time progressed and I recognised how gravely he had related to it, I learned it. His endorsement I had never lacked, gaining only support and appreciation from him. But at the moment my mouth sang the words back to the one who birthed my ears to them, our bond had radiated. "When someone is in need, aid them with no hesitation,” he always told me. "Forgiveness is never a question," he said. And so from the day I sang that song, I realised how effortlessly I could lift the heart that lifted me into warm arms. I had never thought of the day the room across from my mine would be vacant. I had never imagined a morning without contagious laughter in the kitchen. I had never pictured the countless notebooks in the drawers, filled with decades of clever poems, to lose their owner. It had never dawned on me how simply life could change in the crack of one night. Truthfully, having lived every dawning day for 16 years with a continuous presence, it had never occurred to me that there'd come a time when it would be gone. The man who taught me the Russian alphabet was gone. The man who woke in the middle of the night to walk my trembling self to the bathroom was gone. The man who cooked the best latkes was gone. The man who bought every child unable to afford an ice cream at the playground was gone. The man who taught me wisdom and conceived my sense of self was gone. One of my parents was gone. Деды не стало. The candles on Shabbat are now lit without his prayers. Birthdays now lack his funny cards. My home now holds one less body, but it will never lose his soul. My grandfather taught me what it meant to be selfless. My grandfather taught me that fortune wasn't material, and it was present anywhere you brought it. My grandfather taught me life with love and light. My grandfather has passed, but his soul still shines bright.