Sympathy flowers in New Orleans

The chapels are the other half of the map, and they are specific. Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home at 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd. in 70124 is the best-known address in the city, sitting alongside Metairie Cemetery — the largest cemetery in New Orleans and the one full of the marble society tombs — so a chapel service and a graveside interment there can happen on the same grounds. Jacob Schoen & Son at 3827 Canal Street is in Mid-City, a few blocks from Adrian's Florist and within sight of the Canal Street cemetery cluster. Charbonnet-Labat-Glapion on St. Philip Street in Treme is the historic anchor of the New Orleans jazz funeral, where a service is followed by a brass band and a second line through the neighborhood. Rhodes Funeral Home and Majestic Mortuary Service on Dryades Street in Central City, along with Gertrude Geddes Willis on Jackson Avenue, carry generations of Black New Orleans funeral tradition. Greenwood Funeral Home on Canal Boulevard adjoins Greenwood Cemetery. In Jefferson Parish the chapels are close to five of the six benches: Leitz-Eagan and Lamana-Panno-Fallo on Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Tharp-Sontheimer-Tharp on North Causeway Boulevard, Muhleisen in Metairie and Kenner, and Garden of Memories on Airline Drive. On the West Bank, Mothe Funeral Homes serves Harvey, Marrero and Algiers, and Westlawn is in Gretna. Delivery is to the chapel before the doors open for visitation, not during the service.

Timing is the part out-of-town senders most often get wrong. A typical New Orleans Catholic sequence is a visitation the evening before with a Rosary, then a funeral Mass the next morning, then the procession to the cemetery, then a repast at a family home or a hall. Flowers need to be standing in the chapel before that first visitation window opens, which usually means a morning or early-afternoon delivery on the day before the service, not the day of. If the Mass is at a church rather than the funeral home — St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square, St. Augustine in Treme with its Tomb of the Unknown Slave, Our Lady of Guadalupe on North Rampart, St. Patrick's on Camp Street, Immaculate Conception on Baronne, St. Mary's Assumption and St. Alphonsus in the Irish Channel, Holy Name of Jesus on the Tulane and Loyola block, Corpus Christi-Epiphany in the Seventh Ward, or Mary Queen of Vietnam in New Orleans East — the parish office, not the funeral home, sets what may be placed at the altar and when. Jewish families at Touro Synagogue or Temple Sinai on St. Charles Avenue, or Congregation Beth Israel in Metairie, generally do not receive flowers at the service; a plant or a food gift to the house where the family is sitting is the appropriate send, and Hebrew Rest on Elysian Fields and Gates of Prayer Uptown are the corresponding cemeteries. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Robert E. Lee Boulevard follows Orthodox convention. When in doubt, the funeral home's director will tell you exactly what the family has asked for — they answer the phone at any hour during a service week.