This past weekend, I went to stay with my Grandma and her sister. This may not seem monumental news, but even as I went through the rituals of experiencing shabbat with my grandmother, I wanted to write about it. As a little bit of background, my Grandma Renee is 86 years old (may she live until 120), lives in London for most of the year but visits Israel for festivals. Until a couple of weeks ago, Grandma Renee lived with her younger brother Bernard in a corner-house on the Finchley Road - the home owned originally by their own parents. My great-uncle Bernard, and another brother Michael, had never married. So when my grandma divorced my grandfather, in an era when divorce was rare in the orthodox Jewish community, she moved back into her childhood home, now with three children in tow. My mother was the middle of these three children. (Yes, the psychological issues you're now imagining that my mother has, all of them probably exist.) Both great-uncles, Bernard and Michael, were still living at home, which is where they remained, for the next 50-odd years. Odd in all senses of the word. Then three weeks ago, my great-uncle Bernard passed away suddenly. As if death is ever un-sudden. Amongst the youngest and fittest of the remaining siblings - 4, out of 8. My grandma had been worried, that Tuesday morning, that he'd been in the bath an awfully long time. She called my mother to say she thought that maybe he'd fainted. My mum came round. The details are blurry, nobody wants to talk about it. They got the door open, and there he was. They told my younger cousins he'd passed away 'in his sleep'.

'Uncle Ben', wrapped only in a tallit, was buried here in Israel, in the burial grounds of the prestigious Ponevezh Yeshiva, in the tradition of all of my mothers' older relatives. At the funeral, under a hot sun bouncing off white, Jerusalem-stone tombs, my grandmother stood weeping by her younger brother's grave. "I didn't want you to leave me," she wept, "...I didn't think you would go first."

Fast forward three weeks, to this past shabbat. In almost 50 years, my grandmother had never had a shabbat without Uncle Ben. Although I was there on the first shabbat after he passed away, I had my mum, my aunt and my cousins there as back-up. We tried our best to make two devastated, bereaved sisters laugh, to tell stories about Uncle Ben, to explore their feelings - with us there as their safety-net. This shabbat, I would be going it alone.

Of course when I arrived, they wouldn't let me lift a finger to help prepare and so I stood on the balcony, gazing out over the Jerusalem forest, wondering how they had become so strong. The idea, just the briefest of notions I don't even dare to explore when I think about losing a sibling, G-d forbid, made me shudder through to my core - an expression I never understood until it tore through me on my grandmothers' balcony, under the gaze of a setting Jerusalem sun. I turned to watch my grandmother and her sister Sylvia, pottering in the kitchen. My grandma called across to me - "You should wear your hair down, darling, it doesn't suit you up like that." I had forgotten that shabbat alone with them also takes a metaphorical suit of body armour, to bounce off the ego-bashing that comes with their loving commentary. At 5.09pm, I watched my grandmother light 8 candles - for her parents and siblings no longer with us. I watched her 'bentsch licht', reciting their names, asking G-d to make their 'gan eden' - their paradise - an easy one, to keep them all together. I watched her, tears gathering in my eyes, praying for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; beseeching G-d to keep us healthy, to prolong our lives. I wondered how many more opportunities I would have in my lifetime to watch my grandma bentsch licht. I pictured myself telling my future children how Grandma Renee used to recite a passage in yiddish after lighting her candles, how she focused on each person in our family, wishing only good things upon them.

Later on, after a hearty meal, I watched her during Grace After Meals. During the short section where, silently, you bless those at your table and in your family, I saw my grandmother wince as she said ' achi' - years of blessing her brother, sat to her left-hand side, the shock of losing him, all wrapped up in one word. She closed her eyes, as if in pain. She finished bentsching, and then she began to talk. To tell stories about my Uncle Bernard, how she felt without him around, how terrified she is to return to the house in London and realise that he is, really, gone. Without my siblings to hide behind, no cousins, no other grandchildren around, I bore witness to my grandmother's fears, feelings, memories, a moment of pain, and her laughter. Her laugh, that causes her whole wrinkly, pale face to fold inwards, her eyes screwed up tightly, holding in peals of laughter that cause her body to shake in amusement.

I don't know if the person I end up with will come along anytime soon, or if they'll get to meet my Grandma Renee, my last living grandparent. There's no doubt that my children will not be priviliged to know her, as they will not have met my lovely Bobba, or funny old Zeida. I wish I could have bottled the feeling of my shabbat alone with my Grandma Renee this week - to be able to take it out and breathe in deeply... in future years, when I can only miss her.