Sympathy flowers in Woodland Hills

Woodland Hills sits at a fork, and which way a funeral goes from here decides everything about the flower order. West of the city the services run out the 101 into the Conejo corridor: Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park at 5600 Lindero Canyon Road in Westlake Village, with its own funeral chapel on the grounds, takes a large share of families from the west Valley, Calabasas, Agoura Hills and Westlake Village, and Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Simi Valley serves Jewish families who would once have driven the other direction entirely. East and north, the Valley's older burial grounds do the rest of the work: Oakwood Memorial Park and Mortuary at 22601 Lassen Street in Chatsworth, Eden Memorial Park at 11500 Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills with Groman Eden Mortuary beside it, the archdiocesan San Fernando Mission Cemetery on Stranwood Avenue near the old Mission San Fernando Rey de España, and Valhalla Memorial Park at 10621 Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood. Over the hills, Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills and Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills face each other on Forest Lawn Drive; on the Westside, Los Angeles National Cemetery on Sepulveda Boulevard takes veterans and Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park on Glendon Avenue handles Westwood services. Nearly all of that lies inside the live 18-mile radius; Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City sits past the edge and is better handled as a phone quote.

Most services that end at one of those cemeteries begin at a church or synagogue in Woodland Hills itself, which usually means two deliveries at two times. St. Mel Catholic Church on Ventura Boulevard and St. Bernardine of Siena on Calvert Street carry much of the local Catholic funeral traffic, including the large Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Armenian and Filipino Catholic families of the west Valley — a standing piece or an easel wreath for the church, a smaller vase design for the vigil held the evening before, and a separate graveside piece if the burial follows in Mission Hills or Chatsworth. Temple Aliyah on Valley Circle Boulevard (Conservative) and Kol Tikvah on Ventura Boulevard (Reform), with Shomrei Torah in West Hills, anchor the local Jewish community, and the convention there differs in kind rather than degree: the funeral itself is traditionally without flowers, and what belongs at the shiva house afterward is a living plant, a basket of fruit, or a gift to whichever charity the family has named. Muslim families in the west Valley generally bury within a day and rarely use flowers; cooking for the household is worth more. One line in the order notes covers any of it.