Sympathy flowers in Tempe

Tempe has exactly one burial ground of its own, and knowing that saves a sympathy order. Double Butte Cemetery at 2505 W Broadway Road is the city's historic municipal cemetery, and it is the one sympathy address wholly inside the Tempe line - a flat, open, low-shade site where a committal in June is a very different delivery from one in January. Almost every chapel service for a Tempe family happens just over a city border, and the drive decides the order. East, in Mesa: Bunker's Garden Chapel on North Centennial Way, Lakeshore Mortuary on South Dobson Road, Mariposa Gardens Memorial Park on South Power Road, Mountain View Funeral Home on East Main Street, and Queen of Heaven Catholic Cemetery and Mortuary on East Baseline, which is the Diocese of Phoenix burial ground most Tempe Catholic families use. Southeast, out on Chandler Heights Road: Valley of the Sun Mortuary and Cemetery. North, in Scottsdale: Messinger Mortuary on East Indian School and Green Acres Mortuary and Cemetery up on North Hayden Road. West, in Phoenix: Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home on East Indian School, A.L. Moore-Grimshaw on West Bethany Home, and Sinai Mortuary of Arizona, which handles Jewish funerals for the whole Valley. For veterans, the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona sits up off Cave Creek Road in north Phoenix - the longest run on this list and the one that most often needs a day's notice.

The congregational map of Tempe changes what to send more than any generic rule does. In Guadalupe, the Yaqui and Mexican-American town that shares ZIP 85283 with south Tempe, Our Lady of Guadalupe anchors a Catholic pattern in which an evening rosary and then Mass the next morning are both floral occasions, and where the family's home becomes the gathering place afterwards. If the family belongs to Temple Emanuel of Tempe on South Rural Road, ask before ordering: donations in the deceased's name are the usual request, the service itself is typically handled through the Sinai chapel in Phoenix, and a plant or a food basket sent to the shiva house days two through seven is the more useful send than a chapel arrangement. At the Islamic Community Center of Tempe on East Sixth Street, burial happens quickly and floral tribute is generally not part of it, so a delivery to the family's home in the week that follows is the appropriate gesture. A Latter-day Saint service in Tempe happens at the neighborhood chapel - there are meetinghouses along Rural, Kyrene and Baseline whose addresses read residential - and the flowers belong in the foyer and cultural hall rather than near the pulpit. For Protestant services, Tempe First United Methodist on University Drive and University Presbyterian on Alameda Drive are both walkable from downtown.

Then there is the ASU layer, which is unique to this city. A memorial gathering for a student, a professor or a longtime staff member is often held on the Tempe campus, and those are the hardest sympathy addresses in the metro area to deliver to: the campus core is pedestrian, Palm Walk and Cady Mall take no vehicles, building names do not resolve to street numbers, and a memorial in a ballroom or an auditorium may be set up ninety minutes before doors open and broken down the same afternoon. When the address is a campus building, give us the building name, the room, the start time and a mobile number for whoever is setting the room - a driver who has to ask a passerby will lose half an hour. The same applies in reverse for the department office: a condolence arrangement sent to a colleague at work goes to a staffed front desk, and in Tempe that desk may be inside a building the driver reaches on foot from Rural Road. Off campus, the practical alternative is the family's home, and for a household in mourning a plant that needs no attention beats cut flowers that need water twice a day.