Eulogy delivered at Bert’s funeral service by his grandson Jake Krakovsky January 6, 2016

No one would disagree that Bert Lewyn was a remarkable man, a man of incredible courage, strength, will, and determination. But as his grandson I knew a very different Bert Lewyn. My memories of Papa before his disease, before Alzheimers, are few and far between. I remember Papa leading the passover seder. I remember Papa passing out gelt at Chanukah. I remember bringing friends over to my grandparents’ home, and being surprised when they told me they had trouble understanding him. “He has such a thick accent,” they would say. I had never noticed. To me, that was just Papa.

Even in his later years, after publishing his book, the Papa who spoke to colleges and universities and even my own middle school class — for the most part my memories of that man elude me.

What is left, the man that I knew, the Papa to whom I grew close, with whom I spent my time, is Bert Lewyn as seen through the kaleidoscope lens of Alzheimers. It’s not that I remember a different man than those of you who had years and decades longer with him than I did — but that I got to know many beautiful parts of him which shone bright through the pockmarks of the disease which came to cover his mind and body.

In the last few years of his life, Papa frequently developed what I can only describe as “catch-phrases.” Little scraps of text, turns of phrase from some forgotten past, in many different languages, that would float up from below and catch between his teeth. These he would lob at me when I came into a room, and once I learned each new secret word, I would toss it back to him. It was a game we could play. Some would only last a couple weeks, other stuck for months.

The more you hear the same words repeated, I find, the bigger they get. The more meaning and nuance they soak up. All the more so when the person sharing the words is, as far as they know, saying them for the first time, every time. One of his phrases that really stuck around was in German: “Der beste krankheit nicht — The best sickness is not worth a damn.” He’d say it, and I’d say it and we’d smile. I probably recited that one with him dozens and dozens of times.

Hey may have been referring to any one of many ailments, but of course now when I think of “der beste krankheit” I think only of Alzheimers, a disease of both body and mind. The best sickness may not be worth a damn, but it is through its lens that I truly grew to know and to love my grandfather. In the summer of 2012 I worked as his daytime caretaker. Helping him eat, drink, exercise. Dress, shower, shave. Countless hours of conversation, of driving to-and-from doctors and physical therapists. Caring for my grandfather in his second childhood, I came to know a very different Papa from the serious, stoic, business-like man of my own childhood. Through the mirror of Alzheimer’s I found intimacy with Papa. We were, it seemed, at last grandfather and grandson. And I was privileged to know him in his warmth, his vulnerability, and his humor.

As long as I can remember, humor has been the way I engaged with the world around me. Silly, goofy humor; clever intellectual humor, or dark, tragic humor — whatever the world might throw at me, I dealt with it best through some type of laughter. But I never knew a humorist quite like Papa. He came with quips at the ready. When I’d come over in the morning, I would always ask the same thing, “How are you young man?” To which he might reply: “Well, I’m here, and to say any more would be an exaggeration.” That’s a direct quotation. The Papa of his final years seemed most alive when engaged in a witty back and forth, whether it be with a receptionist at the clinic, a nurse at the doctor’s office, or with his family back at home.

In the earlier stages of the disease, Papa’s humor and wit often served as a welcome distraction — one wasn’t likely to dwell on a repeated story or a name un-remembered with laughter in one’s mouth. As his condition progressed, I think his humor was as valuable to him as it was to the rest of us. As long as he could speak, he could joke. I should be so lucky.

During these last years, every moment between us seemed to me precious and ripe with meaning. Even the most everyday remark seemed to hold some special truth. In his post-war life, my grandfather devoted himself, almost obsessively, to providing his family with safety, comfort, and anything they could possibly need. Having experienced extreme privation himself, he worked endlessly and tirelessly to ensure his wife and children would never experience the same. Knowing him as I did, in the end of his life, I often wondered if some of the things he said and did were indicative of questions and thoughts that had laid long dormant within him. Spiritual and intellectual and emotional concerns which he had pushed aside, out of necessity, to focus on survival, came bubbling back to the surface.

I want to briefly share a story that highlights this experience, and maybe you will know what I mean.

In the final scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the titular King holds the dead Cordelia, the youngest of his three daughters, in his arms. In the moment before his own death, he is mourning the loss of his child. “Oh, thou'lt come no more,” he says to Cordelia, “Never, never, never, never, never—” and then, suddenly, the mournful King interrupts himself. There is a shift in poetic rhythm and meter that conveys a change in urgency and energy. “Oh thoul’t come no more. Never never never never never/Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.”

In the midst of extreme spiritual intensity and distress, Lear humbles himself with an mundane, earthy request. “Undo this button.” In his final moments he gives an expression of gentle, pedestrian humility. “Thank you, sir.” The juxtaposition of the metaphysical and the corporeal is heartbreaking. Each heightens its opposite. And a couple of lines later, the king is dead.

Moments like this one, the sacred and somatic contrasted, the heavenly and earthly yoked together, happened often with Papa. I took to writing down and recording many of our conversations at the time, never knowing when our dialogue, repeated ten times in a row, might give way to some pearls of wisdom or insight. He was so casual in the shift from the unremarkable to the poetic that I some times looked at him as if he might be a prophet. And just as quickly, our conversation would return to the ordinary and the day-to-day.

One day, too hot to go outside, we were walking laps around Nana and Papa’s indoor pool. The swimming pool was the Sun, huge and central, and Papa (known throughout his life by the fondly ironic nickname, “Speedy,”) paced his slow shuffling orbit, walker firmly grasped, like a planet on the outer reaches of the solar system. I played the role of Papa’s moon, orbiting him in double or triple time, and ensuring he was a safe distance from the water.

As we finished our laps and headed back into the house, Papa stopped for a moment. The conversation suddenly turned to the topic of death. And of hope. “Hoffen und Harren macht Manchen zum Narren,” he said. “Hoping and waiting makes fools out of some,” a paraphrasing from Ovid. And, “If you run out of hope, you have to hang up your coat.” I think that was a Papa original. A pause, and he seemed to grow somber. His gaze shifted upward and he said, “He’s the only one who knows, yes? And he’s not talking.” Then he sighed and asked me, “Will you buckle my belt? My hands are shaking, and my trousers won’t stay up.” King Lear’s button. Moments of clarity amidst the fog.

The comparison with King Lear is a limited one. Much unlike the mad king, who “took too little care of things” when it came to his people, his kingdom, and his family, Papa was truly gifted in the great and generous love he had for his children and grandchildren. Unlike Lear, who left the world in isolation and amidst destruction, my grandfather died surrounded by those he loved and their compassionate care.

My grandfather, far too humble to consider himself a king, though he was one, secured his legacy in the home and the family that he built from scratch with his wife Esther. In his five children: Andy, Marc, Larry, Cindy, Michael; and six grandchildren, Alexandra, Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Sloan, and myself.

The very last line of King Lear goes to The Duke of Albany. His patriarch dead, his wife dead, and tasked with the rebuilding of a kingdom, Albany says this:

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”

Papa was, in every imaginable sense of the word, a survivor. He survived things that I pray none of us ever need confront. As a Jew and as a human being, he taught me the meaning of the word “survival.”

I’m reminded of another of Papa’s catch-phrases, circa 2014. I would ask him how he was doing, and he would grab me firmly by the wrist in that iron grip of his, and say “You know what the Australians say, don’t you?” What’s that, Papa. “She’ll be right, mate.” She’ll be right, mate, I would say back to him. And we would smile.