Sympathy flowers in Milpitas

Two facts shape almost every sympathy order that comes out of Milpitas. The first is demographic: this is one of the most Asian American cities in the United States, roughly two-thirds of its 80,000 residents, with large Chinese and Taiwanese, Indian, Filipino and Vietnamese communities alongside Latino and long-settled Portuguese families. Funeral flowers are not one vocabulary here, they are six or seven, and getting it wrong is visible to everyone in the room. White and yellow chrysanthemums are the core of a Chinese or Vietnamese tribute, red is avoided entirely because it belongs to celebration, and a standing wreath or easel piece is often expected to carry a banner sash with the sender's name. A Filipino Catholic family will want flowers at the wake and frequently again for the nine-day novena that follows the burial. An Indian Hindu family may cremate within a day or two, which compresses everything, and then hold a prayer gathering at the home or a hall a week or more later where flowers are entirely appropriate. Sikh families gather at Gurdwara Sahib San Jose on Quimby Road, the largest gurdwara in North America, and floral practice there is modest and family-specific. Milpitas also has the Jain Center of Northern California, and for Muslim families burial is fast and flowers are usually not the custom - food and a visit are. The second fact is geographic: Milpitas has essentially no funeral industry of its own, so the service is almost always somewhere else.