Sympathy flowers in Belleville

The oldest burying ground in Belleville is four hundred feet from a bus stop. The Belleville Reformed Church on Main Street traces its congregation to 1697, back when this place was called Second River and was still part of Newark, and its graveyard holds people who were buried before the Revolution. Everything else is newer than the town's grief: the large modern grounds that Belleville families actually use are all just over the line, in North Arlington across the Passaic, in Newark to the south, in Bloomfield to the west. That geography is the first practical fact about sending sympathy flowers here. A Belleville funeral is almost always a three-address event — a viewing at a funeral home in the township, a Mass or a service at a parish nearby, and a burial in another municipality entirely — and the flowers for each of those three places arrive at different times and in different shapes. If you are ordering from out of state with one name and one town, that is enough for us to work with, but tell us which of the three moments you are sending into, because a piece built for an easel at a viewing is the wrong object to hand to a family at their front door a week later.

The cemeteries within reach of a Belleville order, in rough order of distance: Holy Cross Cemetery on Ridge Road in North Arlington, the Archdiocese of Newark ground directly across the river and the most common Catholic burial for this township; Mount Olivet, Fairmount and Woodland cemeteries in Newark, ten to fifteen minutes south on Route 21 or Broad Street, which serve the families whose roots are one town down; Glendale Cemetery on Hoover Avenue in Bloomfield, a mile and a half west; Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in East Orange and Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Montclair, both Archdiocese grounds; Rosedale Cemetery on the Orange and Montclair line; and Gate of Heaven Cemetery and Restland Memorial Park in East Hanover at the western edge of the radius. For Jewish families, King Solomon Memorial Park in Clifton and B'nai Abraham Memorial Park and Hollywood Memorial Park in Union are the grounds in range, and flowers are not the convention at any of them. Two miles south of the township line, at the bottom of the same Branch Brook Park whose cherry trees Belleville is known for, stands the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Ridge Street in Newark — the seat of the Archdiocese and one of the largest cathedrals in North America. Pieces for a funeral there need sanctuary scale and an arrival time set by the cathedral office.

Belleville is a genuinely multi-tradition town and the differences are not cosmetic. The Archdiocese of Newark parishes of Belleville, Nutley and Bloomfield follow full Catholic convention: standing pieces at the chapel, a casket piece from the immediate family, a graveside arrangement, and crosses and hearts as recognized forms rather than decoration. Close to half the township is Hispanic or Latino now — Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Colombian and Ecuadorian families are the largest communities in this corridor — and in those services the corona, the standing ring on a stand, is the expected piece, frequently with a Spanish ribbon banner reading the relationship rather than the sender's name. Our shops letter those in Spanish without being asked twice. The Italian-American families of Belleville, Nutley and Newark's old First Ward, whose parish anchor is St. Lucy's Church, keep the same Catholic forms with heavier, denser designs. For Jewish families in Clifton, Livingston, West Orange and South Orange, flowers do not go to the chapel or the grave at all: a plant delivered to the shiva house, or a donation, is the correct gesture, and the shops will build the plant instead. For Muslim families, flowers are not part of the janazah — send to the family's home after the burial. For Hindu families, white garlands and white arrangements are appropriate and our shops source them.