Richard Lewis, You Made Me Laugh

        I had not seen or heard of him for a while, but I remember him. I think I saw him on the late-night talk shows going back to the 1980s. Letterman, Carson, Leno, and others. In the 1990s, more late-night shows with Conan O'Brian, more of Leno and Letterman, and others. Maybe you did Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and other night folks. Arsenio Hall? There were others.

    I saw you, I heard you, I felt you. It kind of felt like I knew who you were, and you knew a lot about us humans. I thank you for that. You were human, and funny.

    Manic, troubled, like someone I was remembering the other day. Jewish, both of you. You had mothers that loved you but maybe that was not always the best. Right? Did these relationships cause some kind of extra psychic strain? Whatever that is, whatever that is called. Being Jewish, being American, having a mother who puts extra pressure on you, or life or society or culture that puts extra expectations on you, or us, or on them.

    Or maybe it had to do with all the centuries of the pogroms and the Holocaust, and all the bloodletting and the cultural mores of the past mingling with the modern age? He died when Israel was pounding, smothering, and starving out Gaza. Not funny at all. But now he is spared this cruel world...

    Richard Lewis: I did not know you well, but I knew you enough.

    And you made me laugh. You were funny, and troubled, and silly, and pretty smart.

    You made it to 76. You helped a lot of people, from what I know.

    God bless you and rest you. May your humor and ultimate grace beyond the banality and mania and somewhat paranoid or self-flagellating bites of words and effusive complaints, or uber hypochondriac dialog, and on and on... May you find your way back to where you should be. Among the funniest and most human.