Sympathy flowers in Southampton

Eight miles northeast of Southampton, off Highland Road in Upper Makefield above Newtown, Washington Crossing National Cemetery buries veterans from across the Philadelphia region, and it is the address that most changes how a sympathy order should be placed. A national cemetery committal is short and it runs on a posted schedule in a covered shelter rather than at the grave, which means flowers timed for the burial usually arrive at the wrong moment and in the wrong place. Ask the funeral director where the family wants them; on this grid the answer is almost always the funeral home during the viewing, with the family carrying what they want to the cemetery themselves. The other burial grounds in the radius each behave differently: Shalom Memorial Park on Byberry Road in Huntingdon Valley and Roosevelt Memorial Park in Trevose are the Jewish cemeteries closest to Southampton, Sunset Memorial Park sits on Second Street Pike in Feasterville, Resurrection Cemetery in Bensalem serves Catholic families on the lower Bucks side, and small parish and township burial grounds are scattered through Northampton, Warminster and Bryn Athyn, including the ground at the New Church cathedral on the hill in Bryn Athyn.

Before anything is ordered, get the building right. In this corridor the viewing and the funeral are frequently in two different places on two different days — a Tuesday evening viewing at a funeral home on Second Street Pike or Bristol Pike, a Wednesday morning Mass at a parish church, a committal somewhere else entirely — and chapels change ownership and names often enough that a family's own directions can be out of date. Take the name and the street address straight from the obituary or from the funeral director, and give the studio four things: that address, the day, the hour, and the surname as the family wants it read on the card or ribbon. If there is a viewing the night before, say so, because that is usually when a piece should be standing in the room rather than the following morning. Anything sent to a Mass or a service, rather than to a viewing, should be at the building before the doors open to visitors.

Tradition changes what belongs, and this grid holds several side by side. Catholic families in Upper Southampton, Richboro, Holland, Warminster and Bensalem — Our Lady of Good Counsel on Knowles Avenue in Southampton, St. Vincent de Paul in Richboro, St. Bede the Venerable in Holland, Nativity of Our Lord in Warminster, St. Andrew in Newtown — take the widest range of forms, with the casket piece arranged by the immediate family and everything else built to stand on its own in the room or to sit on a table at the house afterward. For Jewish families, and this corner of Bucks County has a substantial Jewish community anchored by congregations in Richboro and Newtown and by the cemeteries at Huntingdon Valley and Trevose, flowers at the funeral are generally not the gesture; a plant or a fruit-and-flower basket sent to the shiva house during the week of mourning, addressed to the household, along with a donation in the deceased's name, is. The New Church community at Bryn Athyn keeps its own practice, and its funerals are held at the cathedral complex four miles southwest of Southampton. When you are not sure, ask the funeral director — it is a question they answer several times a day, and they will tell you plainly rather than guess.