Sympathy flowers in Santa Rosa

The first thing to establish about a Santa Rosa death is the timing, because Sonoma County does not behave like the Northeast. Cremation is the norm here, and the consequence is that a great many families hold no chapel service in the first week at all. What happens instead is a celebration of life three, six or eight weeks later — at a winery tasting room, a family property out a valley road, a community hall, sometimes the Veterans Memorial Building on Maple Avenue beside the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. If you order sympathy flowers on the day you hear the news and address them to a funeral home, they can arrive at a building where nothing is scheduled. So ask, plainly: is there a service this week, or something later. If it is later, send to the house now — the flowers that matter most are the ones that arrive while the family is still fielding phone calls — and send a second arrangement to the venue when the date is set. That is two sends, and it is the correct answer here far more often than it is elsewhere. When there is a service in the traditional window, the list of places is short and nameable. Daniels Chapel of the Roses on Sonoma Avenue is the long-established downtown chapel and the address most often given to out-of-town family. Eggen & Lance Chapel on Mendocino Avenue handles a large share of the rest. Santa Rosa Memorial Park on Franklin Avenue is both a cemetery and a funeral provider, and it sits immediately alongside the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, the historic 1854 burial ground on the same street — two different destinations a block apart, which is precisely the kind of confusion worth resolving before a driver leaves. Calvary Catholic Cemetery is the diocesan burial ground. Catholic funeral Masses run at St. Eugene's Cathedral on Montgomery Drive, seat of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, and at the Church of St. Rose on Tenth Street downtown, the parish the city is named for. Congregation Shomrei Torah on Bethards Drive is the Reform congregation; where a family follows Jewish practice, a plant or a food delivery to the house after the burial is the send that is welcome, and flowers at the graveside generally are not.