Closing Remarks by Jodie Evans

Max Palevsky Memorial Service

Friday, May 7, 2010

The last two-and-a-half days I have literally been picked up and held by friends and family.

My awesome girlfriends arrived before I’d even made a phone call.

Matthew who landed at LAX just hours later and hasn’t stopped taking care of all the details, including the photo montage, made with the support of our angel and friend Linda Carlson.

Jasiu who has been by my side filling every need. My dear friend Mark E Pollack who has not stopped a moment in supporting me and with his amazing team has produced everything here with grace and full-on attention to detail.

Norman who cancelled a trip and Leonard, Pete and Peter who immediately said “Yes” when asked to speak.

Keith Agre who heroically and tirelessly kept Max healthy and was with us for 37 years. He is seeing patients and will join us later.

Max was essentially about love, generosity and gratitude.

When the pain of his loss grabs my belly and sends me on a rollercoaster ride I feel his hand pull be back into gratitude. It is what he greeted everything with and it is what he has left me with. I feel selfish going into the grief of my loss and instead am whipped into the gratitude of these amazing last 7 years of 2 soul mates healing their hearts with the greatest love I have ever known.

I sat at the foot of his bed almost 7 years ago. Jeff, Madeleine's husband had called and told me I had to bring Matthew home from India because his dad would be lucky to make it 3 more days. So when the family was sleeping, I went to the hospital from midnight to 5 in the morning and sat at the foot of his bed. On the third day, I looked up at the ceiling and said, “You can't take him away now, Matthew is just going to college and he can't lose his dad and I am feeling like there is something that needs to be completed between us.”

“I will do anything, please don't take him now.”

The next day he told me about a dream, not something he did often. He said he saw his father in his dream and he told him it was not his time yet, and Max's will to live kicked back in and he began to get better.

And slowly our seeing each other again led to the unbelievable happening...we remarried.

Each step into our rekindled love was a blessing. The feeling that no one before or after could be as happy or as perfectly matched as we were.

Max never forgot he was born on the wrong side of the tracks. He never lost the sense of wonder about all that his life had given him. Daily he would marvel at something (me included) and express how very lucky he was: “Can you believe we live here, sweetie!?"

He would do things and never take the credit for what he did. He would just relish in the offering.

He loved his friends and family so much. Sharing time with them always brought him pleasure--and if it didn't they wouldn't be asked back.

I remember Fran Leibowitz once saying that Max was the only rich person she knew that really knew how to enjoy his money.

He retired after selling the company at 45 and set out to live the life of the Philosopher he was. To do what he loved. To make movies, collect art, go to the ballet, eat fabulous food, take boat trips to beautiful places so he could be with lots of friends and laugh and be outrageous.

He never wanted anyone to worry about money. He had grown up in the depression and had seen worrying about money was deadening.

“It's only money, sweetie,” he would say.

"Sweetie." We were all sweetie, and when he says it you are held in the expanse of his love.

A friend wrote yesterday, "He was the most fun Jew I have ever known. I cannot believe he died so young.”

Bob Silvers of the NY Review of Books wrote to me, “He made me feel his marvelous combination of, on the one hand, a brilliant, probing, skeptical mind and, on the other, his deeply felt convictions that we were living in a time of injustice, brutality and ignorance and should be doing something about them. And in a more distinguished, sensitive and thoughtful way than so many others…”

Max was an extraordinary, rare human being, most rich in his humanity.

All of us who were so blessed to be loved by him will painfully miss the extravagance of his love, yet will be fed by it for the rest of our days.