Sympathy flowers in Plainview

Almost every Plainview funeral ends on the same road. Eight miles east of the hamlet, Wellwood Avenue runs south out of Farmingdale through Pinelawn and into West Babylon past one of the largest concentrations of burial ground in the United States: Pinelawn Memorial Park and Arboretum, Long Island National Cemetery, St. Charles Resurrection Cemetery, Mount Ararat Cemetery, New Montefiore Cemetery, Beth Moses Cemetery and Wellwood Cemetery, stacked one after another along a few miles of a single avenue. A Plainview family leaving a morning service in Woodbury or Hicksville drives Route 110 or Broadhollow Road south, turns onto Wellwood, and is at the grave inside twenty-five minutes. Two of our fourteen benches sit on or beside that route — Margie's Flowers NY at 1977 New Hwy in Farmingdale, 4.1 miles from the 11803 centroid, and Linden Florist at 211 S Wellwood Ave in Lindenhurst, 8.4 miles out and physically on the avenue. That geography is the first useful thing to know here: it tells you which piece has to be somewhere at 9:30 in the morning and which one follows the family home in the afternoon.

Where the flowers actually belong depends on the tradition, and getting that wrong is the most common mistake made from out of town. At a Jewish funeral, flowers generally play no part in the service at all — nothing goes to the chapel, nothing goes to Mount Ararat or New Montefiore. The send goes to the shiva house, a Plainview street address where people will be sitting for several days, and what works there is a low arrangement or a plant that a neighbor can put on a kitchen counter without hunting for a vase, plus a legible card, because the family will be reading forty of them. At a Catholic funeral the flowers are expected: the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which covers all of Nassau and Suffolk, runs Cemetery of the Holy Rood on Old Country Road in Westbury, six miles west, and a standing piece at the funeral home is the conventional send. At Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, the rules are the federal ones: an arrangement may be left at the grave, glass containers are not permitted, and staff clear arrangements once they wilt — so time a veteran's graveside flowers to the committal, not to a random Tuesday. Pinelawn Memorial Park sets its own conditions on what may be left and for how long; if a piece needs a stand or a frame, ask the park office first.