Sympathy flowers in Palisades Park

Start with the form, because in this borough the form is the decision. Palisades Park has the highest share of Korean-American residents of any municipality in the United States, and at a Korean funeral the piece that does the public work is not a bouquet — it is a geunjo wreath: a tall standing ring of white chrysanthemum on a three-legged frame, with a vertical sash down the front carrying the name of whoever sent it. Companies send them. Churches send them. Alumni associations, in-laws' workplaces and the owner of the business two doors down on Broad Avenue send them. They line the corridor outside the room rather than crowding the room itself, and they are read like a guest book, which is why the sash text is the single most error-prone field in the whole order. Decide before you order whether the sash carries a personal name, a family name with the relationship spelled out, or a company name — and decide whether it is set in Hangul or romanised, because a shop that cannot set the characters will ask, and a shop that guesses will get it wrong in a way that is visible to everyone who walks past it for two days. This is not the only tradition in the borough; there is a substantial Spanish-speaking population here too, with Catholic services and the standing easel and casket work that go with them. But if you are ordering from outside Bergen County for a Palisades Park family, ask which of the two you are sending into before you choose anything.

Where the service ends matters as much as where it is held, and from 07650 the burial grounds split in three directions. The two closest sit in boroughs that touch this one: Madonna Cemetery in Fort Lee, up and over toward the bridge approach, and Fairview Cemetery in Fairview, immediately south — both close enough that a graveside piece set out before the procession is a straightforward morning. South into Hudson County are Flower Hill Cemetery in North Bergen and Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City. Southwest, across the Hackensack Meadowlands, is Holy Cross Cemetery at 340 Ridge Road in North Arlington, the Archdiocese of Newark's large ground for this stretch — from here that is Route 46 or the Turnpike spur down through the marsh, twenty minutes on a good morning and appreciably more on a bad one. North and west the list opens out again: George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, Maryrest in Mahwah, Cedar Lawn Cemetery in Paterson and East Ridgelawn in Clifton. Name the cemetery, not the town, when you order. Half of those grounds are fifteen minutes from Broad Avenue and half are not, and a graveside arrangement is the one delivery in this catalogue with no second attempt — it either stands there when the cars pull in or it does not. Cremation is also common among families here, and an urn table wants a lower, tighter piece than a casket does; say which you are sending to.

One last thing that only shows up in a borough like this one: a meaningful share of the sympathy orders placed from 07650 are not for a funeral at all. Korean families keep the anniversary of a death, and Chuseok in the autumn draws people out to the graves in a way that has no equivalent on the American calendar — which is why the Fort Lee and Fairview grounds see visitors in September and October from households that have not been near a chapel since the burial. Seollal at lunar new year produces a smaller version of the same pattern. If you are sending for one of those days rather than for a service, say so plainly in the order: it is a quieter piece, it goes to a grave or to a family's own house rather than to a viewing room, and there is no director to telephone and no placement to negotiate. It is also the easiest of all these orders to get right, because the only deadline is the one the family set. What it does need is a date in the notes, since a memorial delivery arriving a day late is a different thing entirely from a bouquet arriving a day late.