Sympathy flowers in Saint Paul

The second thing to read is the obituary itself, because Minnesota families put instructions in it. The line that appears constantly in Pioneer Press and Star Tribune notices — memorials preferred to a named parish, hospice or scholarship fund in lieu of flowers — is not boilerplate here; it is a real request, and the graceful response is a small plant to the family's home rather than an arrangement to the chapel. Parish funerals still dominate the calendar. The Cathedral of Saint Paul on Selby Avenue handles the largest services, but the working funeral churches are the neighborhood ones: the Church of the Assumption on West Seventh with its twin spires, St. Agnes in Frogtown, Nativity of Our Lord in Macalester-Groveland, St. Peter Claver on Oxford Street in what remains of Rondo, House of Hope Presbyterian at 797 Summit Avenue, Central Presbyterian on Cedar Street. Mount Zion Temple at 1300 Summit — the oldest Jewish congregation in Minnesota — and Temple of Aaron on Mississippi River Boulevard follow Jewish practice where flowers at the service are not customary and food or a donation to the mourning household is; a plant sent to a shiva home is the appropriate gesture there. Saint Paul also holds the largest urban Hmong population in the United States, concentrated through the East Side, the North End and Frogtown, and Hmong funerals traditionally run across several days with the family present continuously — so the useful question is which day of the service you are sending for, not merely which chapel. The East Side's Karen community, the West Side's long-established Mexican-American parishes around District del Sol, and the East African congregations north of University all bring their own timing, and a note naming the family rather than the deceased helps the chapel desk route the arrangement.