We are all a combination of our experiences, molded into a sum of who and what’s happened to us.

One of the most pivotal men in my life passed away on Wednesday. Alexander Mickievic, my grandfather, loving husband and father, and all-around selfless human being, is no longer here, and though many of you didn’t know him, the world feels less whole with him no longer in it.

He battled cancer bravely for more than eight years, but after 94 years of life, there is no reason to speak about dying rather than living.

My grandfather was always a man who reflected upon his life. I often think back to what made me want to be a newsman, a journalist. What was it that planted the seed?

I look back on my younger years, right around the time before I went to kindergarten. My grandmother spent her days with me in parks and my grandfather would watch me at night. He was in charge of the Belorussian newsletter for a group of immigrants and others that escaped both Belarus and Europe over the years who hoped to influence change back home by spreading the news of what was happening.

He deputized me to help him mail hundreds of these newsletters. I was in charge of putting the stamp on the wet sponge by pressing it down and then sticking it on the envelope. A small life lesson in itself: don’t lick the stamps because that’s not good for you. I used to joke later in life that he put me to work at an early age in exchange for rent.

When I was still small enough, he would take boxes of these letters in his grandpa shopping cart and let me sit in there with them as he brought them to the post office. I felt like I was transporting priceless cargo. All the neighbors knew him, and they all spoke to him about his grandson.

Few of them knew his real story. Back in his village in Belarus, my grandfather wanted to be a teacher. He enjoyed educating people, but once the war broke out, Belarus was right in the middle of a continent ripped open.

At the age of 18 or 19, I can’t quite remember, my grandfather was pressed into military service. I believe it was required at the time. He told me of stories where he was on the front lines fighting Nazis. He told me stories of bullets whizzing by his head. He told me about being taken captive by Germans in a POW camp in Warsaw.

He told me about it as matter-of-factly as you would describe your commute to work. That was his life, his story and his pain, but it was his, and he never made more of anything than it needed to be. That was who he was.

He told me how one day he and some fellow captives in that POW camp found a weak spot in the fence and pulled it down, and how he fled for his life. How some family of strangers let him hide in their home for several days, sheltering and feeding him while Nazis looked for the escaped prisoners.

He never spoke of real fear, or hunger, or the pain after he was shot in his right hand, but he didn’t have to.

There were many more stories like that one, but once he managed to get out of Eastern Europe, he never looked back.

He made his way to Belgium by way of France, where he bolted to America on a cargo plane (the only time he ever flew) to a place he didn’t know and a language he didn’t speak. He had roughly $20 on him as a legal immigrant. He never got to see his parents or his village ever again. Luckily other Belorussians welcomed him.

He took up residence in Queens, and lived modestly. He worked all sorts of jobs – landscaper, maintenance man, etc – while staying connected to his society. One day he found out about a woman with two soon-to-be teenage daughters in Poland who had lost her husband. She was alone, penniless and about to be swallowed up by circumstance. Without ever meeting her, he wrote her a letter and asked her to come to America to visit him and see if she wanted to bring her kids.

He showed up at the airport to meet this woman, my grandmother, holding a dozen roses and a sign with her name on it. After a couple of years of figuring out how to get her and her kids over here, my grandfather took in a family that he adopted as his own.

Then years later he got a grandson. One that he inspired to be quite like himself in a lot of ways. I am by no means the strong and silent type, but he showed me what it truly means to be a good man – someone who keeps his word and sets an example.

My grandfather helped put me through school, and lived long enough to see my name in the papers he went to pick up at newsstands. I’ve never seen him happier than when he could pick up a Queens Tribune or later a Daily News to see my byline or picture in it.

It meant the world to me, but it meant the universe to him. There were days, years later, where I would walk upstairs and see him rereading my old articles.

When I was very, very young, and had trouble sleeping, I would inevitably leave my room, wake him up and tell him I couldn’t sleep. No matter the time of night, he always sat with me, counting the passing planes going to LaGuardia in my window. He always said it never took more than 10 minutes before I was asleep.

That was how he lived: 10 minutes at a time, not saying much about what needed to be done, and just doing it. I am proud of things I have done over my 31 years,  but I couldn’t have done any of it without him.