We just got a lovely bouquet for my mother from her job.

[conuly]

And to be fair, my mother would've liked these flowers.

On the other hand, she would've also liked snacks. I'm begging you, if you have the irrepressible urge to send something to somebody's house after a death, mine or anybody else's, consider a (culturally appropriate) gift basket. It reminds them to eat, plus they don't have to figure out what to do with food the way they have to do figure out what to do with flowers.

(Also, of late, none of the gift baskets I've gotten have made me cry. Flowers, apparently, are something else entirely.)

Edit: Not, of course, that I don't appreciate nice gestures, but... I'm still a bit too sad to appreciate flowers politely, I guess? Sorry.

Comments

[cellio]

Jewish tradition is to send mourners food, which I think is very practical and helpful. My congregation gets people together every now and then to cook stuff in bulk and freeze it in family-sized portions that can be deployed quickly. (This supplements, does not replace, what other people do -- but since the synagogue knows about the death before it's publicly known, we can also start helping right away.)

When sending flowers, there are better and worse ways to do it. When my cat died, Chewy sent me flowers -- in a vase with water already in it. All I had to do right then was accept the delivery and put it on the table. Somebody mourning a parent might not have the spoons to figure out what to do with a bundle of flowers in a box that need to be put in a vase (we have vases, uh, where?) etc. I've rarely sent flowers to anyone at all (I've done it for happy occasions sometimes), but now I have the additional clue of asking about arrangements with vases.

[conuly]

Jewish tradition is to send mourners food, which I think is very practical and helpful.

I think this is a lot of people's traditions, but somehow it gets mixed in with the flowers tradition which... well, I'm not a fan.

[cellio]

I assume others do this too; sorry for not being more clear. We also have a "not flowers" tradition, which I meant to work in there but didn't. If you visit a grave you don't leave flowers; you leave a stone. If there have been flowers at the funerals I've been to, I either didn't notice or don't remember -- not the overflowing cascade of arrangements and stuff I've seen at some other funerals.

I am fortunate to not yet have much personal experience with funerals, so I'm not equipped to make any broad statements bout traditions there.