Joan Rivers Gets The Touching (And Hilariously Offensive) Sendoff She Deserves

Joan Rivers’ funeral was held yesterday in New York City, and as was to be expected, it was a spectacle the likes of which Joan would most certainly have approved.

Fans gathered outside Rivers’ fabulously decadent apartment, and her daughter Melissa was so moved by their presence that she came out to thank them personally. Here she is on what must have been a very difficult day:

Celebrities were high in number at the Upper East Side synagogue where the service was held — who else but Joan could get Howard Stern, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Sawyer, Whoopi Goldberg, Donald Trump and Steve Forbes all in the same room? To say nothing of Barbara Walters, Hugh Jackman, Barry Diller, Rosie O’Donnell, John Waters and Margret Cho.

Here are photos of the memorial program — note that Audra McDonald and Hugh Jackman performed songs:

Cho wrote about the experience on her website, which will give you a sense of what it was like in the incredibly high-security memorial. Long story short — lots of tears, but not without a few good laughs.

She wrote in a post called Putting the fun back in funeral:

We all wept – like professional mourners…In the morose silence Howard Stern said, “Joan Rivers had a dry pussy.”

At first, the words just hung there, as no one knew exactly what to do. Of course I started laughing hysterically, and everyone else, remembering who we were there to honor, followed suit. Howard Stern actually choked back tears as he continued – “Joan’s pussy was so dry it was like a sponge – so that when she got in the bathtub – whooooosh – all the water would get absorbed in there! Joan said that if Whitney Houston had as dry a pussy as Joan’s, she would still be alive today…”

It was so wrong but so right at the same time. So Joan. So great. RIP my friend.