Sympathy flowers in Fullerton

Most Orange County cities send their funerals somewhere else. Fullerton does not, and that single fact shapes every sympathy order placed here. McAulay & Wallace Mortuary has been at 902 North Harbor Boulevard for generations, a mile north of the downtown rail crossing on the same street as almost everything else in town, and the family's second chapel sits on Rose Drive in Yorba Linda. Loma Vista Memorial Park, the city's cemetery, is at 701 East Bastanchury Road, up on the north slope between Harbor and Brea Boulevard, roughly a mile and a half from the mortuary — close enough that a chapel service and a graveside can be served by the same driver on the same morning without recrossing a freeway. Memory Garden Memorial Park is just over the line in Brea. For families whose plots or chapels sit elsewhere, the usual destinations are Hilgenfeld Mortuary at 120 East Broadway and Melrose Abbey Memorial Park at 2303 South Manchester Avenue in Anaheim, Forest Lawn Memorial-Park on Lincoln Avenue in Cypress, Rose Hills Memorial Park at 3888 South Workman Mill Road in Whittier, Holy Sepulcher Cemetery at 7845 Santiago Canyon Road in Orange for a Catholic burial, and Fairhaven Memorial Park at 1702 East Fairhaven Avenue in Santa Ana. Our florists ask which of those first, because the address changes the delivery hour more than the design does.

A large share of Fullerton sympathy orders never reach a chapel at all. Cremation is the majority choice in this state by a wide margin, and the gathering that follows is often a reception at a house two weeks later, a memorial in a park shelter, or simply relatives sitting in a living room in Raymond Hills or off Euclid while arrangements are still being made. Those deliveries are easier to time and frequently more welcome than a chapel piece: a hand-tied bouquet in a vessel the family does not have to return, a compact arrangement that fits a kitchen counter next to the food everyone keeps bringing. Fullerton's congregational mix matters here too, and it is specific rather than generic — St. Mary's and St. Juliana Falconieri carry the city's Catholic volume, the Diocese of Orange has its seat at Christ Cathedral, 13280 Chapman Avenue in Garden Grove, eight miles south, Temple Beth Tikvah on North Acacia Avenue is the long-standing Reform congregation in town, and the Korean-American churches concentrated along Beach Boulevard through Buena Park serve a large part of north Fullerton. Where the custom is to send nothing to the service and everything to the house afterward, say so when you order; the studios in this ring handle both without needing it explained twice.