Alzheimer’s – My Heart Will Go On

Yizkor – Yom Kippur – 5759
September 30, 1998

I vividly remember when Ruby was pregnant with Menachem, the same Menachem preaching now in the Social Hall, that we visited my maternal grandmother. I said to her: “Grandma, you’re going to be a great-grandma.” Except for a brief tear, there was no recognition, no response. Her body lived and breathed, yet where was the person whom I loved, who shared with me her old world wisdom in an ancient accent, who made borsht, gefillte fish, chrayn and mandlebroit from scratch? We knew of the affliction of Alzheimer’s Disease before it became a household word.

This insidious disease ravages, among four million other Americans, former President Ronald Reagan. In his farewell letter to the country he wrote: “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.” Alzheimer’s has been described as a disease that attacks the brain’s hard drive like a computer virus, erasing personality byte by byte.

I

In the hours that I would visit my grandma in the Workman’s Circle Home for the Aged on Grace Avenue in the Bronx and sat silently by her side, in that sunset, I was, and am, still mystified.

I see this person and I am filled with memories of how she was.
I am filled with her voice of our private conversations.
I am filled with the sound of her footsteps, up the three flights of stairs to her tenement apartment, to my bedroom in my parent’s home.
I am filled with memories.

At times I enjoy sharing them with my children, a woman they never knew and will never know. At times I laugh when taking them “home” to Boro Park in Brooklyn and 13 th Avenue, the main shopping street, imagining how my grandmother must be tickled to witness from heaven their pilgrimage. At times I cry, because though she died the August before Menachem was born twenty-three years ago, I still miss the kiss, miss the voice, miss the wisdom and the steps.

For each of us at Yizkor and Yahrzeit, there are loved ones, grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, and children, for whom my reminiscences have parallels in your lives. My words depict a common path, the symptom of living and the syndrome of loving.

We are filled with memories, augmented with photo albums, tape recordings and now, videos. As we ascend the ladder of time we add to the storehouse of memories. Our ROM might get smaller but our RAM only increases. How many conversations we begin with: “I remember only as yesterday…” We sometimes rue an additional ache and pain, hurt when a contemporary passes on. But for as long as we live, we increase our memory banks. And this is good. This is the way it ought to be.

A colleague, Rabbi Harry Halpern, composed a beautiful poem entitled “What is Memory?”

Where does yesterday go?
What happens to the days which have passed?
Are they consumed as objects which are destroyed by fire,
Leaving only ashes behind?

Or is there perhaps some indestructible quality
Which can save the past from annihilation?
The answer lies not in the days themselves,
But rather in us.
It rests within our power to save the yesterdays
And the means for achieving this is memory.

What is memory?

It is the God-given gift
Of being able to behold the
Golden days of the sunset
Which went before
While standing in the ensuing gloom.
It is the ability to hear the sweet melody
After the instruments have ceased playing.

What is memory?

It is the ability to feel the zeal and spirit of youth
In the midst of the disillusionments of the later life.
It is the ability to dance in the heart
When the legs can no longer keep up with the music.

What is memory?

It is the gazing at the bride beneath the canopy
And remembering the infant in the crib.
It is playing with the grandchildren
And seeing their parents.
It is celebrating a boy’s Bar Mitzvah
And simultaneously attending the Bris.

What is memory?

It is experiencing today the heartache of yesterday.
It is the sorrow in the present for an agony of the past.
It is a conversation with someone who can no longer speak.
And the sight of a smile on a face no longer here.

What is memory?

It is all that is left to us
From the burnt-out hopes and strivings,
As well as the pain and sorrow, of the past.

What is memory?

It is in which, above all else,
Is to be found the source of our immortality.

In a sense, my grandmother was alive when I sat with her, even in her silence, and she is alive with me now as I remember her and share this little bit with you. We are alive now, and after this chapter closes, we will still live, because our families and friends will remember us, for the laughter, the fun, the sorrows and the tears.

II

But I wonder, what was my grandmother doing in her silence?

What is President Reagan doing thinking while gazing at a Pacific sunset?

Though my grandmother’s eyes were like a curtain drawn, or perhaps focused in a distant gaze, what did they see?

Perforce I must believe, we must believe, that, even in silence, they too, were and are, recounting their own memories. Perhaps that is all they do, that is all that is left for them to do. I imagine that my grandmother was thinking about the day of my birth, the times she took me to the market, of my and my brother’s Bar Mitzvahs, of my wedding day to Ruby, of hers on the Lower East Side to my grandfather Abraham. Maybe she was remembering her passage in steerage from a little Polish town. Not only did I have my memories, she had hers. As I recounted mine, she did hers, only in silence. She lived many years. She had many chapters with many pages, all extensively footnoted. And I imagine that, magically, without a blink, she was turning every page and reading every word.

The Broadway musical “Cats” included a song and a refrain that contains one more element that I imagine was also present.

Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again.

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin.

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
A new day has begun, a new day now for ev’ry one
Yes, a new day has begun, a new day now for ev’ry one

Perhaps as she came to the last chapter, page and word, she realized, even metaphysically, wordlessly, that her memories brought her to a new day – Paradise – Gan Eden – Heaven. There is, in our beliefs, a new day, in the sun of God’s Presence, for everyone.

This thought gives me great comfort and peace, for I know that in our memories, we are always attached, neshama to neshama, across the great divide.

Conclusion

How do we link ourselves with our loved ones? What do we do with our memories, or better, what do they do to us? Poetically speaking, where are they? You will recognize the song.

Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you go on.

Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on.

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more, you opened the door
And you’re here in my heart,
And my heart will go on and on.

Love can touch us one time
And last for a lifetime
And never let go till we’re gone.

Love was when I loved you,
One true time to hold on to
In my life we’ll always go on.

Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on
Once more, you opened the door
And you’re here in my heart,
And my heart will go on and on.

You’re here, there’s nothing I fear
And I know that my heart will go on
We’ll stay, forever this way
You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on.

As we say Yizkor, light the Yahrzeit candles and gaze into their flames, we recount our memories, retain and strengthen the eternal bonds with our loved ones. I feel my grandmother’s kiss and hear her voice because “We’ll stay, forever this way, you are safe in our hearts and our hearts will go on and on.

Amen.