Sympathy flowers in Beaumont

The chapels and burial grounds people actually use here are a short, well-known list. Broussard's Mortuary is the name Southeast Texas families reach for most, with its Beaumont chapels and locations out through Nederland, Silsbee and Kountze, and its own crematory and cemetery grounds. Claybar Funeral Home covers the eastern side of the Triangle from Beaumont through Orange, Bridge City and Vidor, which matters when the family is split between Jefferson and Orange counties. Magnolia Cemetery on Pine Street is Beaumont's historic burial ground, where much of the city's oil-era and civic history is in the ground, and Forest Lawn Memorial Park takes a large share of the modern graveside services. Funerals in this city are frequently Catholic: the Diocese of Beaumont is seated at St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica at 700 Jefferson Street downtown, and St. Anne on Calder Avenue is another regular parish for a funeral Mass, with the Cajun-Catholic pattern of a vigil and rosary the evening before the Mass still very much alive across the Triangle. Baptist, Methodist and AME congregations carry much of the rest of the city's funeral volume, and the repast afterward — gumbo, rice, someone's boudin, a table that fills up without anyone organizing it — is close to universal here regardless of the church. Flowers sent to that table are read as part of it.