Sympathy flowers in Dumont

What catches people out when someone dies in Dumont is that the funeral has two addresses rather than one. The borough's worship buildings are right here — Old North Reformed Church on Washington Avenue, the historic North Church congregation of Schraalenburgh whose counterpart South Church stands over in Bergenfield, and the Church of St. Mary parish — but the chapels where families receive visitors are almost all in the boroughs around us. So a week commonly runs like this: viewing at a funeral home in Westwood or Oradell on the Tuesday evening, service at a Dumont church on the Wednesday morning, burial by noon. Flowers sent to the wrong building are not late; they are standing in an empty room. One question to the funeral director settles it, asked plainly: should this come to you, or to the church, and at what hour. Most directors would rather have everything at the funeral home, because they have somebody at a desk, a room to keep pieces in and a vehicle that takes them over to the service. A parish church on a weekday morning can be locked, with an office that opens later than your delivery.

Read the obituary properly, because it answers three things people usually telephone about. It names the funeral home, which fixes the chapel address. It prints the visiting hours, which is your receiving window. And it sometimes carries a line asking for a donation to a named cause instead of flowers — an instruction rather than a courtesy, and following it is the sympathetic act, not a missed chance to be generous. The chapels used from this borough sit in a rough circle. Becker Funeral Home in Westwood is out New Milford Avenue and up the Kinderkamack corridor. Volk Leber keeps a room in Oradell, across the Hackensack River, and another in Teaneck, reached down Knickerbocker Road. Pizzi Funeral Home in Northvale is north through Haworth and Closter. Louis Suburban Chapel in Fair Lawn and Vander Plaat Memorial Home in Paramus lie beyond those, over on the Route 4 and Route 17 flank — which happens to be where Height's Flower Shoppe in Hasbrouck Heights, Perry's Florist in Glen Rock, Florist Insaddlebrook and Elmwood Park's Gloria's Flowers And Gifts already spend their days, so for those two rooms a van is heading toward the service rather than away from Dumont.