Got 100 all right right I had january2 no Reon of course and musician you know sort of makes sense got the music ladies and gentlemen would everybody please put your cell phones to silent mode thank you all for coming and for the people that are on line you’re blocking
The um yeah there everybody thank you again for joining us um the service is going to be conducted by Rabbi charleene Brooks we will Begin by doing the traditional cutting of the ribbon the me family those of who are wearing ribbons will do you want to Stay Judge of Truth J judge of Truth just the two bottom corners one up give me one moment ra thank is there anybody that doesn’t have a program good morning on behalf of the family thank you all so much for being here we’re going to begin with the psalm 23 Psalm that King David
Wrote when his own son passed away and as you’ll know has in our two major pieces of liturgy that we do in every funeral it doesn’t talk of death it doesn’t talk of of sadness speaks of Faith so please read along with me Psalm 23 before I chant this in
Hebrew it’s on the inside of your handouts if we could read this together the Lord is my sheer I shall not table me the Pres of Thed She L we are For Right Foree Call Of Bel gazer has a beautiful family and there’s so many people here who want to share their memories and their thoughts and I would like to invite her grandchildren first Rachel and Casey to speak hi um we are two of her four grandkids um my name is Casey and I just want to
Say thank you Grandma for being such a supportive role model thank you for being available to us when we needed it Rachel grandma was strong of body and mind she never complained she was kind warm so loving and nonjudgmental she was the most accepting of all of our relatives in her
Generation Um she would drop everything to be there for us when we needed her and she passed this kindness and strength down to her children her grandchildren and her great grandchildren I see them all of us it brings us joy to know that Grandma is with grandpa I love you Grandma thank you
B was truly loved and grateful for your love now I would like to ask Tracy and Nathan to come up and speak unless you are you coming up together yes Tracy ladies sorry um I’m Tracy kantowski I’m Chuck and Beth’s daughter and uh Belle’s granddaughter the oldest original
Granddaughter um because I gained two older siblings when my dad and Beth got married but I’ve been Belle’s granddaughter the longest um which is a privilege that normally don’t like but in this case I’m honored to be the oldest one with her um I was very
Fortunate growing up to be able to spend a lot of time with my Grandma and Grandpa Grandma and I loved in particular to shop together play cards together she’s the one that taught me to play Remy 500 and as Rachel spoke to and Casey she was so kind and loving right
She hated to see me lose she did everything she could I’m sure anybody that any of the grand kids ever played cards with her new she wanted us to win uh and it broke her heart when we didn’t but she was also competitive so she was
Semi okay with it um everyone loved her and it was such a joy to watch her interact with other people she’d go around her building and she knew everybody and everybody always commented how kind um she was and she made us feel so so special If You Ever Had a Bad Day
All you had to do was call Grandma um and you knew that that you were number one with her and it made everything okay she was selfless and giving and willing to do anything to make us happy she used to participate in a lot of um crafts and activities like anything that was
Available grandma was there and signed up and at the place she lived at before Dobson house one of the last things she did was she would make necklaces all the time in fact the necklace I’m wearing today is one of the ones that grandma made uh and it’s probably the last gift
She remembers giving me and I’m so honored to have it I’m sure many of you have some of her special Treasures too cuz they were given out grandma lived to be a 100 which is a very very long time but it still is not long enough I love you Grandma and I miss
You that was beautiful and I’m going to remember that phrase 100 years it’s a long time and it’s not enough I understand uh Nathan yes good morning everybody and thank you for coming um so much has already been said so I don’t want to take too much of your time
And uh one thing that really stuck with me because all here to see here for our grandma um my dad told me when when grandpa passed he said that one of the big grants that he had was that Grandpa wasn’t around to see um the rest of the
Family grow up and grandma lived to see it all and she was such a loving supporting person that I’m so happy that she got to see not only her grandkids but her great grandkids grow up and just um it’s really Stu with so again I appreciate y’all coming thank you thank
You it is always so beautiful number one to have grandchildren but to have them all come up and speak and now I would like to ask B son Chuck G sh thanks for um thank you everyone for coming we really appreciate it my sister and I and
I know she’ll talk and I’m one of few few words I’m not a big speaker so my mother was the strength of our family she’s the one that held us together put up with me my sister and all her anxs more important my father and all his michig ass and
Craziness um but she was the one that kept us all together and kept us on the straight narrow she was always there for for me and my sister Good Times bad times wherever wherever we went uh we used to have a number of a collection of our friends comes to the house
Because they knew my mother and father would welcome them and it was always it was always a revolving door you my friends would come in even if I wasn’t there they go to the refrigerator make themselves a bon sandwich you know they would uh and my mother would always cater to all this
And it was uh very special growing up different times my mother had uh what you call a bad sense of direction she U would go somewhere and somehow get on the towway get turned around she see same person at the toe Booth he wouldn’t charge her anymore she kept coming back
And forth she had no sense of direction she also was uh very good with plants and what have you she was able to destroy probably a plant faster than anyone I knew um she would have like a black thumb when it comes to gardening but loving she was top of the
List kindness she was right there you know my mother was involved with my with me and Laura all the time one of the memories I have is when I was in Little League somehow as a pitcher and I was pitching and uh my mother was behind the
Plate and she thought the Umpire was squeezing me which means that I wasn’t getting the calls and she was yelling and screaming at the Umpire who happened to be a good friend of her and the Umpire turns around and says b don’t you think I’d give him a break if I could
That was my mother she was standing up for us she knew all our teachers she knew all our friends and she was always there for us Mom I love you very much it’s tough to say goodbye but you know it’s uh you live to be 100 which is quite an achievement
Now you get to be with with Dad and all the other relatives and I’m sure they’re going to have a party for you so God bless thank you thank you Chuck you know I knew B mostly in the later years and it is really wonderful to hear these
Memories of when she was younger with her family and I would like to invite up her daughter who um is the reason that I knew b as well as I did and was always in awe Lord who just happens to be the president of this Temple wow what nice crowd thank you so
Much for everybody being here um it’s really unusual to have a name that exemplifies who someone is our mother B was such a person she was Belle which means beautiful in French she was bell inside and outside she was named after her grandmother Bella who according to our
Bubby was the most beautiful woman in the town of driten in Poland mommy was a cheerleader at Manley High School on the west side I’m just going to give you a bunch of facts about her her High bowling score was 236 she attended a bowling tournament in Minneapolis and flew for the first
Time she from that experience she taught me to always put my right foot on the airplane first for safety when you get on mommy she wasn’t a good cook she was terrible cook um when my father went on Weight Watchers we all went on Weight Watchers we suffered through a Weight
Watchers ve cabbage stew made with tomato juice for several years the idea was that you could eat a large helping and not gain any weight fortunately she did make killer brownies and a pretty good egg salad our mother had saale radar we were dirt poor growing up and
But my brother and I really didn’t know that we were so poor because Mommy always found a sale and we always managed to have what we needed I remember receiving plastic boots that were two sizes too big for me for Hanukkah one year because Mommy found a
Really good sale she taught me to go straight to the back of the store to the markdown items I happened to be wearing a third markdown top mom we’d be very proud of it great deal her mom was always reading fiction she visited the book mobile weekly and read most of its
Books she was a grammar expert mommy was always correcting our grammar she was a stickler about it I remember remember telling her um I said oh I I remember her telling me don’t say don’t get me down the blanket you must say get the blanket down for
Me and I thank you mom for being a stickler on my grammar it really helped me in my career when she was 76 she had her first hip replacement and then the second one replaced at age 94 she was always Physically Active walking around her building taking cheer
Aerobics she was really into physical exercise at 89 she developed mild cognitive impairment and moved to the park or the Brookdale or whatever it’s called now it’s changed name so many times on Golf Road she loved the social activities there and her many friends at 97 she needed more assistance
And moved into to the Dobson Plaza Nursing home where the nurses told me that she was their favorite because she was always Pleasant and appreciative when Mommy began driving she used to hit the brake a bit hard at first and my brother and I before seat belts often remember flying off that
Seat she’d go like this to hold us back like that’s really going to do something sense of direction my brother talked about her sense of direction she had absolutely no sense of direction and and one story he told uh it was me driving with my mother to River Oaks Shopping
Center to buy a pair of shoes for an invite dance we got lost trying to get home we drove through the same toll booth twice as my brother said and the second time we drove through my mother said to the toll booth attendant I was just here do I have to pay
Again and the booth attended responded yeah lady we ended up pulling over to the side of the road to call my father for help we did somehow manage to get home but very late as guests of Aunt Ethel at the East Bank Club my mom lost her way in the
Locker room she exited the women’s locker room wearing only a towel she lost her way to the shower she sat in the hallway my cousin Helen told me that she also did this at a spa with her sister at my wedding our wedding when it
Was time for me to go to the ceremony you know you’re all dressed up as a bride I ended up in a freight elevator with my mother we panicked we didn’t know where we were but we did eventually find the ceremony and Mark last night was joking
With me that he had to marry a bridesmaid instead of wasn’t a j selfless everybody’s talking about her being selfless that’s the one word that describes my mother she was selfless she did what was needed to be done for me and my brother once after shopping with my mom downtown at paty R
If anybody you remember that dress shop for my B Mitzvah dress she took me out for lunch to the tart at Carson per Scott I ordered my favorite meal a scoop of cottage cheese a small Jello-O and a scoop of tuna fish on a tart and tray for
74 I devoured my special meal while my mother drank a 12 cent cup of coffee she told me she was dieting so I was wondering why aren’t you eating I didn’t question her however many years later she admitted that she didn’t have enough money to buy herself a lunch and still
Be able to afford our bus faere home she spent most of her money on me I got through it when she won $50 worth of clothes by entering a raffle at EJ Corvettes she took me shopping for new clothes and spent the entire $50 on me in order to pay for my college
Tuition and later our wedding she took a miserable temporary job as a secretary downtown she used to get sick riding the bus in the back of the bus throw up but she’d come home smelling pretty badly but she’d be very excited she after an excruciating day to Proclaim that she
Had just paid for one other guest’s day dinner for our wedding mommy was 19 when her father died she immediately went to work to support her mother and sister she told me she would put the money she earned in her mother our Bubby’s hand to raise a little money for our
Family my mom would pile My Brother and Me in the car and drive a long distance to deliver Frozen sliced roast beef to bars she would carry the heavy boxes into the bars while my brother and I waited we were probably fighting in the car when I was hospitalized when I was
At um at the University of Illinois for uh my appendix had ruptured she came to the hospital she slept in a chair in my room for a week to ensure that I was being cared for properly she never left my side when I ran for student council
President she came up with my campaign slogan she was very clever and stayed up late on a work night making campaign badges for me to distribute she ran doctor’s offices for Dr Sally in South Chicago Dr LaVine at Edgewater hospital and Dr imy at Weiss
She retired at age 80 only when the last doctor had retired when she had her first hip replaced she was working at Weiss hospital and she had the hip surgery in the same Hospital Dr iy wields her down after surgery so that she could help run the office I’m almost done
Family mommy was intensely proud of her children she bragged about us to anyone who would listen she was fiercely supportive of us she was my sounding board I remember coming home from school for my cream cheese and jelly sandwich and I would often burst in the door crying someone had hurt my feelings
Again she would listen and tell me kill them with kindness I remember my mom telling my brother that he was going to go to college and get a degree she would say to him I don’t care if you become a garbage truck driver you will have a college
Degree excuse me Chuck exceeded her Expectations by earning a CPA and serving as CFO of a company our mother stck in the stood in the background of our gregarious father who was just wonderful person but she was a strong influence on him in the background as my our grand kids her
Grandkids said she would drop everything and help us whenever we needed it in fact when Rachel went into labor and her former husband was in medical school in Mexico Rachel called my mom and asked her to drive her to the hospital where she waited until I arrived from
Work one time she found herself at a Cubs game chaperoning my Brownie troop she looked at me and asked what am I doing here I told her that I had volunteered her I always knew I could count on my mom my father ran a small carpet cleaning business from our house I
Remember my mother answering the phone and spelling our unusual last name she came up with G is in George a v is in Victor Z is in zebra e r a little jingle that came in handy until I got married married if nobody can spell our
Name at the end of Mommy’s life she was surrounded by the love of her family including her two canine grandchildren Blanca and Buttercup she was the best mom that I could have ever hoped to have I love you mommy rest in heaven with Daddy thank you thank you
Laura Laura wasn’t sure she could get through that but she did and beautiful thank you Bel Gaber and I understand the when I first heard your maiden name and your mother’s last name gser gazer gser it was it was a it took a bit so I I’m you
Know I would have appreciated that jingle for you to explain it to me but Bel gser she lost her father as you said when she was only 19 and it inspired her even more than she was inspired when she was younger she worked incredibly hard
From a very young age and she always put her family first I can see where Laura gets her zest for Life Belle’s this is something that they shared with me Belle’s work ethic was unbelievable and I know from personal experience that she passed this down to
Her daughter Laura and I’m sure to the the rest of her family now we we’ve heard all these lovely memories and and ideas about B but I want to share a beautiful love story a beautiful love story between Belle and her husband Meer they met while they were in high
School and after Meer graduated he joined the army and while he was an of Duty he saved all of his money and he sent it home to his sister and with that money his sister Lee she bought an engagement ring I’m sorry sister e sister eth wrong sister thank
You he gave the money to Sister EA and with that she bought the engagement ring that he would give to Belle when he returned and they were married when she was 23 now my may gader not only loved his wife but he worshiped the ground that she walked
On even though that he would often tease her but she was clearly the love of his life he also taught Laura and check and Chuck excuse me this phrase that they live by and will never forget and I believe this when you say you’re going to do something you do it
Now this family had has amazing people in it Belle’s mother’s cousin your your mother’s cousin now I don’t know his first name Max Max Eis he was a wealthy man but he used his money to sponsor everyone family to come to America from Poland and just in the nick of time
Because their Farm was burned down just after they left for America now Laura and Mark told me how when uh her mother’s health began to fail they had to take the keys away from her and she could no longer Drive clearly that was preventing her from getting even more
Lost when I asked her how old Belle was them to have you know to it’s very hard when you take someone’s Keys away they don’t like it and Laura said sadly mom was 89 89 she was still driving in fact Belle didn’t need private help uh and an assisted living until she was
94 94 it’s amazing she was blessed then also with wonderful caregivers and speaking of caregiving you know I know Chuck that you were there for your mom and supported her but I witnessed I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much dedicated time and care as Belle received when I
Watched Laura run to her side when I say run I mean run she’s Laura’s always on the run literally and most of the time it was to go visit her mom I got to go I got to go visit mom I got to go I got to go visit
Mom what are you doing well we we play balloon volleyball and it didn’t matter whether Belle was completely aware of what was going on or not that is what they did all the time and even when Bel was unable to communicate easily no one complained Lauren never complained and she never stoed
Her very often visits now here are some adjectives that Laura and Mark used to describe dear belill it would have gone on but we have generous she was caring she was kind she was beautiful she was clever and as was mentioned most of all she was selfless always put her
First Bel had a large and beautiful family that she loved each and every one of you so so much all of you because when you have that much Beauty as you said name when you have that much Beauty inside of you there is no end to the amount of love that you can
Share she loved her son Chuck who shared his memories of his mom her daughter Laura and husband Mark and all her grandchildren Rachel Casey Tracy and Nathan who spoke so lovingly about their grandmother and she was also so grateful for Amy and Matthew and their whole family and all of her great
Grandchildren Ethan and Lia Mia and Evan Meer Addison Cormac and Max and Mitchell wow what a blessing she was also a devoted music lover um I want to share with you this is a scientific fact that even when you have uh dementia if you are suffering from
Dementia there is a part of your brain that does not get affected and there’s I’m I’m pointing to it because somebody told me it was right here there’s a portion of your brain that will continue to receive music and understand and appreciate music especially a song that you have loved through your
Life now she was so much a devoted lover of music that last year when it looked as if Belle was making her transition and all of the cords were removed and everyone was preparing for her passing I came to see her and uh to give her vwy Jewish last
Brights she was no longer conscious and we assumed we really assumed that the next breath would be her last Laura then asked me after saying the prayers to Simply sing to her just a a song that she might like that she had liked I didn’t know which one that would
Be but as I stood close to her and singing what I hoped was a song that she would have known something miraculous happened Belle opened her eyes she woke up she spoke yes we were all quite astounded and then she began eating again the prayers combined with the
Music and the love surrounding her brought her back that was a year ago Belle was clearly not ready to leave her family who loved and admired her so so much she was tough she was determined to live and she did for another year and now at 100 we don’t say
Goodbye we simply say thank you and we love you and your soul can continue and does continue in each and every one of you she has given a part of herself to each and every one of you now the psalm that she re awoke to was This with love that’s true when the things you plan need a help I will Understand not that’s when I’ll be There for just hour not for a day not For we have two very traditional prayers that we chant and recite and of your freom and the first one is which I’m going to ask you to read with me in English on the inside but let me explain the words of el is offering and asking God to send
Down his angels yes his angels to gather around them protect her under their wings and guide her up toam habah to the world to come for her soul will continue on no I do believe that even if you don’t believe in angels I believe in angels enough for all of
You each and every one of you has angels all around you there’s four archangels that will deliver are delivering her soul up to God the Angel Michael on your right and rapael behind you and Gabriel to your left and Orel in front of you if you
Need each and one of you each and every one of you has access to these angels they’re there for every single one of you in times where you call them they will come to you gather around you and protect you as well and that is what is occurring right
Now for B they are protecting her caring for herself please rise as we read l compassionate God eternal spirit of the universe gr perfect rest in your shelter presence who has entered eternity God ref in your etal and ever God her inhance us say please remain standing For must He For Sh When we recite Kadish we say it with faith we say it with the knowledge that we are speaking directly to God and to them this is something that can keep you connected as you if you this gives her soul strength I don’t know if B’s Soul really needs any more strength than she always
Has but this prayer will give her even more strength and take her even more closely to God every time we recite it again this doesn’t have any sadness in it kadish like comforable I guess a little bit to the Our Father prayer means we believe we have faith and we
Love please recite with me For sh those last lines say shalom God who makes peace in the heavens make peace here for all of us and peace to am please be seated the interment is going to take place at Shalom Memorial Park located in Arlington Heights Road excuse me it’s in Arlington Heights it’s on Wilkey Road
North of Rand is the entrance that we will be going in on however we are going to have a funeral procession uh if you’re going please obtain an orange safety sticker put this on the ins inside portion of your right windshield drive with your hiding headlights on and your flashers on if
The hearse is already gone through a light and the light turns red you can go through but I ask you all to please be very defensive look both ways make sure that the carsel stopped again hibe headlights on flashers on Drive defensively after the interment the
Family is going to have a meal of condolence and that’s at Anna’s Red Apple that information is on the inside of your service program and then this evening at uh Laura and Mark schwarz’s residents 4545 West Tu in Lincolnwood and it’ll be in the second floor hospitality room tonight from 6:00 to 9:
And also tomorrow Wednesday from 4: to 8 the following are going to act as Paul bears and in doing so you would uh come up to the casket you’ll follow behind until we get out front place the casket in the hearse and then we will um meet
You again at the cemetery again I want to just mention the procession will form Facing East directly on Oakton Street Oakton is very busy I ask all of you to please be very careful if if the eventually the car will move forward a little bit so that uh there’s more room
But just wait until there’s room on Oakton Street don’t try to double Park on Oak uh the grandchildren uh Tracy Rachel Casey Nathan Matthew and Jack gin um at this time if you would all please come forward For the for hey think us in m a long anybody anybody lose of readers you haven’t signed the register book please do so anybody’s lost a pair of readers these were found know
