Sending Flowers to Melville, From the Family Home to the Aegis Front Desk

Ordering a funeral tribute for Melville from somewhere else, you are trying to get right something you will not be in the room to see, in front of people who knew the person far longer than any florist will. What you send will not say the thing you wish you could say standing there, but in a family like this its absence would be noticed before anything else. Sympathy is the order we send to the suburb most, and it splits two ways. In the established Catholic families, and there are plenty of them here, the flowers are rarely a single order: the funeral home, the Mass at the church, and often the graveside, with the family watching all three arrive.

They go to three addresses on three timings: the funeral flowers to the home the day before or the morning of, usually Oakwood at Booragoon or Chipper at Myaree for families around here; the flowers for the church before the Mass; the graveside flowers timed to the service. For a formal Catholic service the church flowers usually mean a casket spray and a standing arrangement, the kind of sympathy wreaths and sheaths the family expects to see, not a hand-tied bunch. At the graveside the mourners often throw a single flower onto the casket, so it is worth telling the florist if the family will want a few loose stems to hand around. Put the names you need and the service date in the notes, and the florist works backwards from the service time. If the family is receiving people at the house afterwards, sympathy flowers to the home are a separate, quieter gesture. A card to a sympathy order should be short. "With our deepest sympathy, the Hart family" is plenty. Skip the lines people reach for and regret, "in a better place," "everything happens for a reason," "I know how you feel." Plain does more than profound here.

White lilies are the safe answer here, not the only one. For an Italian Catholic funeral the tradition runs to white, lilies and roses and chrysanthemums, and the chrysanthemums carry a meaning most senders never hear. They are the flower an Italian family carries to the grave on All Souls' Day, the second of November. At a funeral they belong. Sent to that same family's home for a birthday or a get-well, a bunch of chrysanths reads as a death notice, and I steered more than one caller off them over the years. White or blush for the service, never chrysanthemums to the house.

For the families who are not religious, and these days that is most of Melville, the flowers turn personal, shaped around the one who died and the life they actually led. The best send-offs I helped put together over the phone were built around what someone actually loved. For a lot of people up around Wireless Hill that meant the West Australian wildflowers, banksia, kangaroo paw, a bit of gum, the bush they had walked for forty years. Ask about their garden before you ask about colours.

An eightieth is the one you do not want to get wrong, and from Sydney or Melbourne you are usually the adult child ordering for a parent who still lives in the family home, or who has moved up the road into care. You will not be there to watch them open it, so the flowers have to carry the whole thing on their own.

If it is the house, most Melville places have a covered porch, so a safe drop in the shade holds fine; note that in the order if nobody will be home. If it is Aegis on French Road or Kitchener Gardens, it goes to reception, the staff log it and walk it through, so put the resident's full name and room number in the notes. A morning delivery means they have it for the whole day.

Anna on what actually lasts for an older recipient

Do not assume bigger and brighter is the kindness. For someone in their eighties, especially in care, a tall showy vase is a tipping hazard on a small table, and a heavy scent is too much in a closed room. I would send a low boxed arrangement, carnations and roses, soft colours, low fragrance. The box earns its place: the foam underneath is a soaked block that keeps feeding the stems, so it drinks for someone who will never top up a vase. Carnations are underrated. They hold two weeks and the scent stays in the background. Skip the stargazers and the heavy oriental lilies for a bedside table.

A thinking-of-you bunch to a parent in care is often the in-between gift, not a birthday, not bad news, just a Tuesday when you are interstate and they are on your mind. There is a lot of this in Melville; the suburb skews older than most of Perth, and plenty of these go to a room in care rather than a house.

At Aegis Melville and Kitchener Gardens the flowers go to the front desk, get logged, and a staff member takes them through, so they reach the resident even when nobody is in the room. A box arrangement beats a tall vase here, the tables are small and crowd easily. A line like "thinking of you today, love Kate" on the card is all it needs.

The calls that stuck with me were the ones from people whose mum had started to lose her memory. They would ask if it was worth sending at all. It is. A familiar flower does something an unfamiliar bunch cannot, a rose or a daisy or a carnation reaches a part of the memory that holds on longer than names do. Skip the exotic tropicals for that, not for the cost, and keep the fragrance low if the room is shared.

Plenty of Melville orders do not fit a funeral, a milestone or a care home. An anniversary, a thank you, a just-because for someone who already has everything they need.

When people could not decide, Anna's answer was always the same.

Let the florist choose. I mean it. A florist's choice bunch gets you the best stems that came into the cool room that morning, not whatever photographs well and has been sitting three days. Give them a colour to avoid and a rough spend, then get out of the way. In a suburb that knows its flowers, that is the order that lands best.