Eulogy examples for a mother or father

Read these eulogy examples for their shape. A eulogy works when its details are true and belong to one person, and the people here are invented, so take the order and the proportions and leave the words. Each note says where details like these come from in a real family, since finding them is most of the work.

How long a eulogy should be

Most eulogies run two to seven minutes. Ask whoever leads the service how long you have, since with several speakers it is often less than you expect, and write to that time.

Humanists UK plans on 130 to 140 words a minute, and most speakers slow down at a funeral.

A short eulogy for a mother (about two minutes)

Good morning. I'm Claire, Rose's youngest, and on behalf of my brothers I want to thank you for being here, and the nurses who looked after her this spring.

My mother grew up above her father's bakery in Utica, the fourth of six children. She started at the counter when she was nine, and for the rest of her life she could not walk past a bakery without looking at the bread and saying, kindly, what was wrong with it.

For twenty-six years she was the secretary of the elementary school on our street. She knew every child in the neighborhood and every child's mother, and if one of us did something we shouldn't have, she knew before we got home. Half the people in this room were sent to her office at some point. She kept a jar of butterscotch in her desk for exactly that reason.

She had a saying for every occasion, and the one we heard most was "Do it now, while you think of it." She wrote the thank-you note the same evening and returned your call the same hour. When she was diagnosed in March, she made a list of the people she wanted to see, and she saw every one of them.

Mom, you were the first person I called with good news and with bad, and I keep reaching for the phone. We will do what you taught us, and we will do it now, while we think of it. We love you.

What makes it work. It opens with who is speaking, since not everyone in the room knows. It gives her a place and a job, then one saying that comes back at the end, which gives a short eulogy its shape. Details like the bakery and the butterscotch jar come from brothers and old friends, so ask each of them for one story before you write.

A eulogy for a father, from his daughter (about four minutes)

Thank you all for coming. For those who don't know me, I'm Maria, Tony's oldest. My father would be embarrassed by how many of you are here, and secretly very pleased.

Dad was born in 1938 in a hill village in Calabria. His father went to America when Dad was thirteen and sent for the rest of them three years later, and in the spring of 1954 Dad and his mother crossed from Naples to New York with one cardboard suitcase between them. That suitcase is still in our basement. He kept it, he said, so he would never forget that everything he owned once fit inside it.

His father was a shoemaker, and so was Dad. For forty-four years he had the shop on Arch Street, and if you lived in this town between 1962 and 2006, he probably fixed your shoes. He used good leather and charged too little. When my brother told him to raise his prices, he said, "Then who would come?"

He learned his English from the customers and from the newspaper, which he read every morning at the counter with a dictionary open beside it. He never lost the accent, and he was proud to the end that he could argue about the Yankees in two languages.

He had one saying all of us can recite: "A good shoe gets resoled. You don't throw it out." He meant it about people too. When a boy from the neighborhood got into trouble in the eighties, Dad gave him a job sweeping the shop and then taught him the trade. That boy is here today, and he has had his own shop for thirty years. When I asked if I could tell this, he said, "Tell them all of it."

Dad married my mother, Lucia, in 1961. She was the daughter of the man who sold him leather, and they were married for fifty-eight years, until she died in 2019. He grew tomatoes in every inch of our yard, and in August he went door to door with paper bags of them, whether the neighbors wanted them or not.

He taught me to drive in the shop's delivery van, which had no power steering and one working mirror. The only thing he ever said, when I took a corner too fast, was "The shoes in the back, Maria." I still hear it at every corner.

The last few years were hard. He lost most of his sight, and he hated that he could no longer see what was wrong with your shoes. He never lost his manners, though. The day before he died, he thanked the nurse for his breakfast in English, and then in Italian in case she understood that better.

Dad, everything you had once fit in one suitcase, and you gave all of it to us. We will keep the suitcase, and we will keep fixing things instead of throwing them out. Ti voglio bene, Papà.

What makes it work. It follows his life in order and stops for short stories, each with something he said, because people remember a parent's own words longer than any description of him. The suitcase opens and closes it. In a real family the year of the crossing and the port are often half-remembered, and a passenger list gives them exactly; how to search Ellis Island records shows what one holds.

A lighter eulogy for a mother, at a celebration of life (about three minutes)

Hi, everyone. I'm Dan, Barbara's son. Mom planned most of this afternoon herself, including the music, and she told me I had three minutes and that she would know if I went over.

Mom grew up on a farm outside Ames, Iowa, the only girl among five children. She said it taught her two things: how to drive a tractor, and how to win an argument with a man who thinks he has already won it. Most of us here have seen the second skill at work.

In 1968 she and two college friends drove to Seattle in a Volkswagen with no heater, because one of them had heard there were teaching jobs. There were. Mom taught chemistry at the high school for thirty-four years. She set off the fire alarm twice, once by accident, and kept a rubber chicken on her desk for students who fell asleep. When she retired, three hundred former students came to the party. Six of them told me she was the reason they became doctors, and two told me she was the reason they did not become chemists.

She met my dad on the Bainbridge ferry in 1971, when she borrowed his newspaper and did his crossword in pen. They were married for fifty-five years. Dad, she wanted me to tell everyone she let you win at Scrabble at least twice.

Her rule for life was "Use the good dishes." She meant it literally, and we ate tacos on the wedding china. She also meant that nothing should be saved for an occasion that might never come. She took up the cello at sixty and was terrible at it for a year, and then quite good.

When she got sick last year, she was clear-eyed about it, the way a scientist would be. She gave us the facts and told us what she wanted. Then she asked who was hungry.

So here is her request, passed on by me. Go home and use the good dishes, and do the crossword in pen. Thank you, Mom. We had a wonderful time.

What makes it work. Humor works at a celebration of life when the stories are true and kind, and when the speaker turns toward the loss before the end, as the last two paragraphs do. Her rule about the dishes gives the speech its spine.

A eulogy for a grandfather, from a grandchild (about three minutes)

This eulogy is for a grandfather in a frum family, given by the oldest grandchild for all of them. In Jewish families the eulogy is called a hesped, and the rav usually decides who speaks and for how long, so ask him first.

I am the oldest of Zeidy's grandchildren, and the family asked me to speak for all forty-one of us. I will try to say only what is true, because Zeidy could not stand exaggeration, and he would stop me at the first word too many.

Zeidy, Reb Avraham Yosef Friedman, was born in Williamsburg in 1933. His parents had come from a small town in Galicia ten years before. His father was a presser in a coat factory and would not work on Shabbos, which in those years cost him more than one job. Zeidy grew up knowing that, and he never let us forget that our Shabbos had been paid for.

For fifty-two years he cut diamonds on 47th Street. He davened at the early minyan, and on the subway he learned the daf. He began the daf yomi in 1968 and made seven siyumim on Shas, and he was most of the way through the eighth. When we asked how he found the time, he said what he said about everything: "Az men vil, ken men." If you want to, you can.

His chessed was quiet. After he became ill, we found a notebook in his drawer with the names of families he had helped each month for thirty years, and not one of us had known.

On Shabbos afternoons he tested his grandchildren, and on Sunday he paid us, a dollar for every right answer and two for a good question. I was eight when I understood that he cared more about the questions.

Zeidy, you showed us what a Yid can do with an ordinary job and a long subway ride. We will try to learn the way you learned and give the way you gave. We ask your forgiveness for any way in which we did not honor you as we should have. Be a meilitz yosher for Bubby and for all of us.

What makes it work. It praises him only for what he did, in plain words he would have accepted, and one grandchild speaks for forty-one. The notebook is the kind of detail a family finds only after a death. In a real family the town in Galicia and the coat factory often survive as one line of memory; the 1930 and 1940 censuses give the father's trade, and his naturalization papers usually name the town.

For a grandmother

The same shape works for a grandmother. Ask your parents for the years before you were born, and an aunt or an older cousin for her childhood, then tell what she was to the grandchildren, down to the thing she always said. One grandchild can speak for all, naming the youngest too.

A eulogy for a brother, from his sister (about two minutes)

I'm Ellen, Mike's sister. I've known him longer than anyone here, which he would point out means I'm older, so I'll say it before he can.

Mike was two years younger than me, and for the first ten years of his life he followed me everywhere. I tried hard to lose him and never managed it, and by the time I was grown I didn't want to. When I moved to Denver in 1990, he drove the truck. When my marriage ended, he was on my doorstep the next morning with coffee.

He was a mail carrier for thirty years, on the same route, and he knew every dog on it by name. Some of the people from his route are here today. Thank you for coming; you were his friends as much as anyone in this room.

Mike was the one in our family who remembered. He kept our grandmother's box of photographs, and he could tell you who everyone in them was. Last summer he sat down with me and went through the box one more time, and I wrote the names on the backs. I didn't know then why he wanted to do it that week. I think he did.

Mike, you followed me for ten years, and then I followed you for fifty. I have the photographs, and now I know who everyone is. Thank you, little brother.

What makes it work. A brother or sister has known the person longest, and this eulogy keeps to things only a sister would know. Names written on the backs of photographs are often the only record of who is in them, and they are worth writing while someone can still say.

A eulogy for a friend (about two minutes)

I'm Linda. Janet and I met in 1974, on the first day of nursing school, when she lent me a pen and never asked for it back. We were friends for fifty-two years after that, and I still have the pen.

Janet's family has told you about the rest of her life. I want to tell you about her as a friend, because she was the best one I ever had.

She remembered everything. She knew my children's birthdays before I did, and she called on every one of them. When my husband was in the hospital in 2009, she drove two hours every Saturday for three months and never once mentioned the drive.

She was also the worst singer I have ever known, and she sang anyway, loudly, at every wedding we went to. Nobody who heard it will forget it, and none of us would want to.

Janet, you lent me a pen fifty-two years ago, and then everything else. Thank you for all of it. I'll keep the pen.

What makes it work. A friend usually speaks after the family, so this eulogy says plainly that it will cover one thing, the friendship, and leaves the rest of the life to them. The pen opens and closes it. The same shape works for a sister or a close colleague: say how long you knew them, and tell two stories only you could tell.

An outline you can reuse

All six examples follow the same outline, and each part shrinks or grows with the time you have.

1. Who you are, in a sentence or two: your name and how you are related.
2. Where they came from: where and when they were born, and the move that shaped them.
3. What they did: their work, with one exact detail.
4. Two or three stories, each short and true, ideally with something they said.
5. What they gave you: the saying or the habit you will keep.
6. Goodbye: speak to them directly, and end on a short line.

How to write a eulogy for your mother or father gives the times for each part and a template to fill in, and covers gathering the stories, the opening and the ending.

Famous eulogies worth reading

Famous eulogies are public speeches, larger than a family's, and each shows something a family eulogy can use. Three of them can be read in full from the links below.

Poems and readings that fit inside a eulogy

A short reading can open or close a eulogy. These are old enough that anyone may print them, and each takes a minute or two.

• Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd," read at funerals of many faiths.
• Ecclesiastes 3:1 to 8, "To every thing there is a season," which suits a long life.
• Proverbs 31:10 to 31, the woman of valor, for a mother or grandmother. In Jewish homes it is sung on Friday night as Eishes Chayil.
• "Remember," a sonnet by Christina Rossetti, published in 1862, in which the speaker asks to be remembered and then says she would rather be forgotten than grieved.
• "Crossing the Bar," by Alfred Tennyson, sixteen lines on a calm death at sea.
• "Death is nothing at all," from a sermon Henry Scott Holland preached in 1910, in which the dead speak as if from the next room.

What a eulogy cannot hold

Each example rests on a handful of facts: a village, a year, a crossing, a trade, a sentence the person used to say. In most families these survive as half-remembered lines, and they fade within a generation unless someone writes them down. The records hold more of them than families expect, such as a passenger list with the town and the date. A eulogy uses a few hundred words of this, and a researched book holds the rest.

Zichronos researches a family in the archives that hold its records, then publishes its history as a finished hardcover book. What a memorial book is compares the books families make after a death, and a memorial book in thirty days explains what can be ready by a date. Family history book examples shows a finished book page by page, what a family history book costs compares the ways to make one, and How we work sets out the steps. For the notice in the paper, see how to write an obituary, and for the other guides, memorials and tributes.

Sources: Humanists UK, how to write a funeral speech, on speaking pace; the Library of Congress on the Gettysburg Address; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Tribute to Robert F. Kennedy; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Address to the nation on the Challenger; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2.