Sympathy flowers in Bothell

Bothell buries its dead in other people's cities, and that is the first thing an out-of-town sender needs to understand. There is no large memorial park inside the city limits, so a Bothell family's service goes wherever the family's church, county or tradition sends it — and because the city is split between King and Snohomish counties, that direction can be either way down the highway. Acacia Memorial Park and Funeral Home carries a Bothell Way NE address at 14951 but sits in Lake Forest Park, southwest along SR-522, and it handles a large share of the Northshore area's chapel services and committals. North, Purdy & Walters at Floral Hills on Filbert Road in Lynnwood serves the Snohomish County half of the city, along with Solie Funeral Home and Crematory at 3301 Colby Avenue in Everett and Beck's Tribute Center on 5th Avenue South in Edmonds. East and south, Cedar Lawns Memorial Park in Redmond, Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Bellevue and Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton take services from families with Eastside roots. Catholic burials generally go to Holyrood Cemetery in Shoreline, and Evergreen Washelli on Aurora Avenue North covers north Seattle. Ask the family which one; do not assume.

The timing question people ask is the wrong one. They ask when someone died; what actually determines the order is when the doors open. Around here the gap between the two is frequently weeks, not days — cremation is the ordinary choice in this part of Washington, and a family will often hold the gathering once relatives can fly in, school is out, or the weather turns. So there are two different sends and they want different things. In the first days, the flowers go to the house: a compact design or a flowering plant that a household fielding phone calls can set on a counter without hunting for a vase, sent to 98011, 98012, 98021 or wherever the adult children live. Later, the flowers go to the venue on the morning of the gathering, sized for whatever surface exists there. And in Bothell that venue is frequently not a chapel at all — a church hall, a clubhouse in one of the Canyon Park or North Creek communities, a reserved shelter at Blyth Park or the Park at Bothell Landing, a hotel meeting room, a Woodinville tasting room or event barn a few miles east. Before ordering for a memorial, get three things: the street address, the hour the doors open, and whether the piece needs to stand on the floor or sit on a table. A 5-foot easel spray in a living room is a burden, not a tribute.

Bothell's congregations tell you more about what to send than any general rule does. St. Brendan Catholic Church on NE 195th Street runs the standard funeral-Mass pattern most senders already know, with altar and casket arrangements arriving before the Mass rather than during it, and burial often following at Holyrood in Shoreline. Cedar Park Church on 112th Avenue NE and Bothell United Methodist Church on 92nd Avenue NE hold larger memorial gatherings where table arrangements at the entrance and near a photograph do more work than floor pieces. The Hindu Temple and Cultural Center on 212th Street SE is the regional anchor for a very large South Asian community spread across Bothell, Canyon Park, Mill Creek and Redmond; rites here move within a day or two of the death, loose flowers and garlands matter more than arrangements, and a sympathy gift is generally better sent to the family's home than to the temple. Muslim families bury within a day wherever they can, and flowers have no part in it; the nearest large congregation is the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, over the ridge in Redmond, and what carries weight there is a phone call and a written note. For Jewish families — Temple Beth Or in Everett is the nearest congregation on the Snohomish side — money to a named charity is what is actually expected at the service; anything green belongs later at the shiva house, where a plant or a fruit basket sits better than a bouquet. In Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese-American households the chrysanthemum does the work a lily does elsewhere: white and yellow are the mourning colours, red is wrong in any quantity, and white orchids read correctly everywhere. Name the tradition when you order and the assigned bench will hold to that palette.