Friends and family of Joan Rivers, who died Thursday, will be able to say goodbye Sunday at her funeral in New York City at Temple Emanu-El, according to a temple spokesman.
The service will be private, and held in the morning; no details on her burial were released, but The Insider with Yahoo is reporting Rivers will later be moved to Los Angeles’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.
There’s no word on whether Meryl Streep will attend, which is a (tongue-in-cheek?) wish Rivers revealed in her 2012 book, I Hate Everyone … Starting With Me, in a passage directed at her daughter, Melissa:
“When I die (and, yes, Melissa, that day will come; and, yes, Melissa, everything’s in your name), I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action….I want Craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way,” she wrote, adding, “I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents…I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyonce’s.”
The beloved comedian passed away at 81 after she stopped breathing during a surgical procedure on her vocal cords on Aug. 28 and had to be rushed from the clinic to Mount Sinai Hospital.
With the possibility that dire complications resulted from a reportedly routine procedure, authorities have stepped in to investigate. The New York City medical examiner’s office tells PEOPLE that after an examination of Rivers’s case, the “cause and manner of death” is still unknown, “pending further studies.” The office will continue to investigate and run tests before determining cause of death and releasing its findings.
The New York State Health Department is also probing the clinic Rivers was treated in, Yorkville Endoscopy in Manhattan. As part of its investigation the DOH has been on-site at the clinic, interviewing staff and reviewing medical records. There have been no complaints or violations to date relating to the clinic, which opened in 2013, according to the DOH.
A spokesperson for Yorkville Endoscopy would say only that, due to health-care privacy laws, they can’t disclose “any information about patients” including Rivers, adding, “in the event of an adverse incident, Yorkville Endoscopy would promptly report to appropriate government and regulatory agencies and would proactively cooperate with any governmental review.”
People Magazine
