Sympathy flowers in Littleton

Fort Logan National Cemetery is the fact that shapes sympathy sending in Littleton. It lies off West Kenyon Avenue between Federal and Sheridan, roughly six miles north of the Main Street district, on the grounds of the old army post, and it is where a large share of veterans from the whole Front Range are buried. If the family you are sending to has a service there, the timetable is not theirs. Committal services at a national cemetery run in sequence at covered shelters, one family following the next, and they are short; the family assembles, is escorted in, and is escorted out. That changes the practical advice more than any floral question does. Flowers intended for the service itself are almost always sent to the funeral home handling the arrangements rather than to the cemetery, because the funeral director is the one who can put a piece where and when it belongs. Anything intended to stay at the grave afterward is governed by the cemetery's own rules on what may be placed and how long it remains, and the funeral director will know the current version of those rules better than any florist will. Of the nine shops on this board, Think Flowers at 300 South Federal Boulevard sits almost directly up Federal from the Kenyon Avenue side, which is a statement about a map and nothing more.

Away from Fort Logan the geography of loss here is compact and old. Littleton Cemetery on South Prince Street is the town's original burying ground, a few blocks from both of the downtown florists, and it still takes services. Drinkwine Family Mortuary on West Littleton Boulevard is the funeral home most Littleton families name first, and Horan and McConaty run chapels around the south metro for families who have used them before. Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens on South Colorado Boulevard in Centennial handles a good share of the east-side services, and Mount Lindo Memorial Park, the hillside cemetery above US 285 whose lighted cross is visible across the southern metro after dark, takes families from the foothill communities out past Ken Caryl. Church services still cluster where the congregations are: St. Mary Catholic Parish on South Prince Street downtown, Light of the World Catholic Parish on West Bowles Avenue out toward Ken Caryl, and the older Protestant congregations along Broadway and Littleton Boulevard. One more local reality matters. Colorado has one of the highest cremation rates in the country, and the practical consequence in Littleton is that a great many families hold no service in the first week at all. The memorial happens three weeks or two months later, sometimes in a church hall, sometimes at a park pavilion along the Platte, sometimes at the house. If you send on the day you hear the news, the house is usually the right address.