Sympathy flowers in Allen

The hardest thing to get right about sympathy flowers in Allen is that the service is often not in Allen. This is a young suburb — the city held fewer than 20,000 people in 1990 — so families here bury their parents and grandparents wherever the family has roots, and Collin County's chapels and cemeteries are spread across three cities. Inside Allen, Turrentine-Jackson-Morrow Funeral Home on North Central Expressway is the chapel most Allen families use, and Ridgeview Memorial Park is the city's cemetery. Head north and the services move to the funeral homes around the historic downtown McKinney courthouse square and to Pecan Grove Cemetery; head south and they move to the Plano chapels, including Ted Dickey Funeral Home West on West Parker Road. A great many Allen memorial services are not in a funeral home at all but in a large church — Cottonwood Creek Church on Exchange Parkway, First Baptist Church Allen, St. Jude Catholic Church on Greenville Avenue, Suncreek United Methodist Church, or one of the regional campuses like Prestonwood Baptist in Plano or Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco. And for veterans, the committal service is usually 35 miles southwest at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. Before you order, get the venue name, the street address and the service time from the obituary or the family, because in this county those three facts sit in three different towns more often than not.

Collin County is genuinely multi-faith, and the conventions differ enough to matter. Catholic services at St. Jude in Allen and the neighboring parishes follow a vigil, funeral Mass and committal sequence, and flowers at the vigil and the Mass are entirely appropriate. Evangelical and non-denominational memorial services — Cottonwood Creek Church, First Baptist Allen, Prestonwood, Stonebriar — often run a week or more after the death and sometimes ask for donations instead; a plant or an arrangement to the family's home in the intervening week is the safer gesture. The county's large Indian-American community holds Hindu rites quickly, typically within a day, with white flowers and garlands as the convention, and a next-day delivery to the home is usually more useful than anything aimed at a venue. For Muslim families, including those connected to the East Plano Islamic Center, burial is also rapid and flowers are not the tradition — food for the household or a donation is the customary condolence. Jewish families in the Plano and Richardson congregations do not usually bring cut flowers to the funeral; a plant sent to the shiva house is the right call. And at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery the committal shelters run tight consecutive slots and glass or breakable containers are not permitted at the grave, so send the arrangement to the funeral home for the service and let the family place it afterward.