{"id":32074,"date":"2025-07-02T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32074"},"modified":"2025-10-15T16:47:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T20:47:27","slug":"my-life-flashed-before-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/02\/my-life-flashed-before-me\/","title":{"rendered":"MY LIFE FLASHED BEFORE ME"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nMy life flashed in front of me. I was walking to the bank. I was at Courtland Oval at Fairmount Boulevard, when a funeral cortege went by, and right off, I knew who was in the coffin and where it was going and where it had been. It was going to the same place I’m going some day. The coffin contained Jerry Zober (1948-2024). I knew him slightly. He was a shrink. I knew his sister, Muriel, better; we were in the same grade in school.<\/p>\n

Jerry\u2019s cortege proceeded\u00a0from the Berkowitz Kumin Memorial Chapel in Cleveland Heights to Hillcrest cemetery in Bedford Heights. I knew all this because I had just read Jerry\u2019s obit. The mourners’ cars had Berkowitz’s orange stick-on Jewish-flag ornaments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to get too close to the cortege because I was feeling somewhat guilty about missing the funeral. I was busy that day! And I had never socialized with Jerry. Not even once. And I was flying to New York the next day and had to deal with stuff before leaving town.<\/p>\n

Here’s the way I appraised the situation: at the funeral parlor — prior to the service — there would have been very little\u00a0 time to schmooze with Muriel, Jerry’s sister. She would have been surrounded by relatives in the family-seating section. Who’s this guy Bert?<\/p>\n

Shiva would have been great, but I couldn’t make it. I had last seen Muriel at her mom\u2019s shiva 10 years ago. Muriel lives in Virginia. Also, I had been to the Berkowitz funeral parlor just a week prior for a friend\u2019s aunt’s funeral. My friend lives in Israel and couldn\u2019t make his aunt’s funeral so I repped him.<\/p>\n

Give me a papal dispensation on Jerry’s funeral, please.<\/p>\n

I sent Muriel an email saying I was sorry I couldn\u2019t make the funeral and shiva. She wrote back, \u201cThanks. I was hoping to see you. Be well.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you ever see my coffin going down Fairmount Boulevard on its way to Hillcrest cemetery, considering waving. Or hide. If you didn’t know me very well, please have ambivalent feelings about the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  My life flashed in front of me. I was walking to the bank. I was at Courtland Oval at Fairmount Boulevard, when a funeral cortege went by, and right off, I knew who was in the coffin and where it was going and where it had been. It was going to the same place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32074"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33659,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32074\/revisions\/33659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}