How to check if connection created by client.connect().async() is alive. Should I reuse this future object created by this async()

[y2241]

I have a couple of questions here and need suggestions.
Currently I am creating a synchronous connection by client.connect() during client initialization and cache the connection to be used by all commands.
However, I am reading the reference of this library and think that using asynchronous connection by
client.connect().async() might be beneficial to reduce my lambda startup time, so that in the lambda startup, I call RedisAsyncCommands<String, String> future = client.connect().async(), instead of client.connect().

1. Should I cache this future object in the client object and reuse it, or should I call client.connect().async() everytime I need to run a command?
2. RedisAsyncCommands.isOpen() is deprecated now, how do I check if the RedisAsyncCommands is open and do I have to close it manually?