Eulogy Examples for a Brother
On this page
What is different about giving a eulogy for a brother
Grief for a brother runs sideways. When a parent dies, people know roughly what to say to you. When a brother dies, the same people go quiet, because he was supposed to be the one still standing next to you at the end of it. You are burying a peer, and half the men in the room are quietly doing the math on their own age. None of that has to go in the eulogy. It helps to know it is why the week has felt strange.
Most of the people listening knew his adult self: the job, the marriage, the man who showed up with a trailer when they moved. You knew the version before all of that. You are the only one there who can put him at nine years old, in a specific place, doing a specific thing. That is not a nice extra. It is the whole reason the family asked you and not somebody smoother.
His wife and his children are in the room, and the person they lost is not the person you lost. A eulogy that is entirely about your childhood can leave them sitting there with nothing. One sentence spoken directly to them, using their names, fixes it. It costs you fifteen seconds and it is the part they will remember for years.
Brothers often did not say the soft things to each other out loud. If you never told him you loved him, do not stand at a podium and pretend you did. Say what you actually did instead. He changed your oil every fall for thirty years. He answered the phone at one in the morning. He drove four hours and turned around. Everyone listening will translate it correctly.
Complete eulogies
Each of these is written to be read aloud. Everyone in them is invented, so take whichever fits and replace the specifics. The shape is what you are borrowing.
Eulogy for a brother, spoken by his sister
≈2½ minutes · 338 words
I’m Denise. Ray was my brother. He was three years older, which he mentioned roughly once a week for fifty-eight years.
Most of you knew Ray from the shop, or from the fire department, or from the eleven years he coached at Kelso Springs Middle. I knew him from before all of that. I knew him when he was nine and decided the ditch behind our house was a river, and built a raft out of a screen door, and made me get on it first.
That was Ray, right there. He would figure something out, and then he would make sure somebody else was safe on it before he was.
He fixed things. Cars, mowers, a furnace at two in the morning in January, the storm door at our mother’s house that he replaced four times because she kept slamming it. He never once said he was on his way. He just showed up, and by the time you noticed his truck he was already under the sink.
He was not a talker. In fifty-eight years I do not believe he ever told me he loved me in those words. What he did was change my oil every fall without being asked, for thirty years, and hand back the keys, and tell me my tires were getting thin.
Carla, he was happier in these last twelve years than I ever saw him. Josh, Bethany, your dad bragged about you constantly, to everybody except the two of you. I am telling you now because he is not here to be embarrassed about it.
I keep reaching for my phone to tell him something. I did it on Tuesday. I do not expect that to stop for a long while, and I have decided I do not want it to.
Ray. Thank you for putting me on the raft first. I understand now what you were doing.
Take care of each other. That is what he would want, and he would want it said in about that many words.
Eulogy for an older brother, spoken by the youngest of four
≈5 minutes · 637 words
For anyone who does not know me, I’m Gwen. I am the youngest of the four Brannigans, which meant that for most of my life Teddy was less a brother than a weather system.
He was fourteen years older. By the time I was born he was already shaving, already working Saturdays at the mill, already the one our mother sent when something needed doing. By the time I was old enough to know him as a person, he was somebody’s husband and somebody’s father, and I spent a good part of my twenties catching up.
So let me start with the part my brothers and sister know and most of you do not.
Teddy taught all three of us to drive, because our father’s method was yelling and Teddy’s method was a box of donuts and the empty lot behind the grange hall. He was the one who found the dog. And when our mother got her diagnosis in 1994, he drove her to every appointment in the city. An hour each way, ninety-one times. He counted, and he never told her the number.
He worked at the mill for twenty-two years. When the mill closed he drove a school bus for nineteen more. A good number of you in this room rode that bus. He knew every one of your names, and he knew which of you needed somebody to say good morning like they meant it.
There were about six years in the middle when he was not easy to love. Some of you know that and some of you do not. I am going to say it once and then leave it alone, because he did the work, and the man most of you knew is the man who came out the other side of it. He was quietly proud of that. He never made a speech about it. He just showed up sober for the next thirty years, one Tuesday at a time.
He married Arlene in 1976, in her parents' backyard, because the church was booked. Forty-nine years. Anyone who ever ate at that table knows what she did for him, and knows that he knew it.
He had opinions. He had a great many opinions. He believed the state should never have moved the highway. He believed you should not need a computer to buy a truck. And he believed, he told me this in April, that a man should own exactly one good coat.
He was not sentimental. He signed birthday cards “T. Brannigan,” like a receipt. But when my daughter was born he drove four hours through snow to sit in a waiting room he was not allowed into, and then drove four hours home without seeing her, because he had a route in the morning.
That is the whole man. He would not say it. He would drive it.
Dana, Mark, Christopher: your father talked about the three of you more than he talked about anything else in the world. Ruby, Sam, little Ted: he kept every drawing you ever sent him. Every one of them. They are in a shoebox in the front closet, and your grandmother is going to make you take them home.
I do not have a lesson to finish on. I have been looking for one all week and I do not think he would have wanted one anyway. He would say we have all got somewhere to be.
So I will say this instead. My brother was fourteen years ahead of me my entire life, and now he is ahead of me in this too, and I hate it. And I am still glad it was him who went first, because it means he never had to stand here and do this.
Thank you, Teddy.
All right. I know. I’m going.
Short eulogy for a brother, when you do not want to speak long
≈90 seconds · 209 words
I’m Aaron. Ben was my brother.
I am not going to talk long. He would not have, and I cannot.
Ben was two years younger. We shared a room until I was sixteen and I complained about it every single day, and I would take all of it back right now for one more night of him talking through the wall about nothing.
Three things.
He was funny. Not clever-funny. He would take a joke past the point where it was funny, into where it was not, and keep going until it was funny again.
He was steady with people who were having a bad time. If you were the one crying at a party, Ben found you. Some of you know that firsthand.
And he loved Nora and the boys in a way that changed him. He got softer. He got better. I got to watch that happen from the next chair over.
That is what I have.
To everyone who has called, cooked, sat in the driveway: thank you. Please keep doing it in six weeks, when it goes quiet. That is when we will need it.
Ben, I love you. I said it enough. I am glad I said it enough.
Thank you all for coming.
Lines that carry weight
“He was my first friend and my first opponent, and I never fully separated the two.”
An opening for a brother close to you in age. Say it lightly. It usually earns a small laugh in the first thirty seconds, which is exactly where you want one.
“I have known him longer than anyone in this room, and I still learned three things about him this week from people standing at the back.”
Good when his coworkers and friends have turned out in numbers. It makes room for their grief instead of competing with it.
“He would be embarrassed by all of this. He would also have come early and helped set up the chairs.”
For the brother who hated attention. It is true of a great many men, and it lands because everybody listening can picture him doing it.
“There were years when we did not talk. I am saying that out loud because he would not have recognized a version of himself this tidy.”
For an estrangement. Say it once, do not explain it, and clear it with your parents before the service rather than after.
“Mom, Dad: he was proud of you. He told me and he never told you, so I am fixing that now.”
Only if it is true. When your parents are in the front row, one sentence spoken straight at them does more than a paragraph about them.
“He never said he was on his way. He just showed up, and by the time you saw his truck he was already working.”
For the practical brother, the one who helped instead of talking. Swap the truck for whatever he actually drove.
“He fought a courageous battle.”
Worth avoiding. It turns an illness into a contest with a winner and a loser. “He was sick for two years and he was himself for most of them” is truer, and kinder to everyone else in the room who is ill.
“Gone but not forgotten.”
A cliché that has stopped carrying any meaning. If you want the sentiment, name the specific thing you will not forget: his handwriting, the way he answered the phone, the nickname he gave you at eleven.
“Carla, the kids: he was a different man with you, and it was the better one.”
His wife and children lost someone quite different from the brother you lost. One sentence aimed at them keeps the eulogy from being only about your childhood.
“He would be telling me to sit down about now. All right. I’m going.”
A closing that works when you have run long or your voice has gone. It ends the eulogy on him instead of on you.
Delivering it
- Ask your parents one question before you write · If either parent is living, ask them: is there anything you would rather I did not say out loud? A first marriage, a diagnosis, a hard stretch, a name. It takes two minutes and it prevents the one kind of mistake you cannot take back afterward.
- Pick one age and stay there · You are the only person present who remembers him at eleven. One scene at a specific age, told properly, does more than a list of everything he ever accomplished. The raft, the paper route, the summer of the broken arm.
- Say what he did, not what he felt · Brothers frequently never said the soft things to each other, and inventing them at the podium sounds false. “He changed my oil every fall for thirty years” is the same sentence as “he loved me,” and it is the one people believe.
- Give his wife and children a line of their own · Use their names. Tell them one thing he said about them that they never heard him say. Fifteen seconds of the eulogy, and it is the part they will still be repeating in ten years.
- Two minutes is enough · You are allowed to do less than you think. A two-minute eulogy delivered steadily beats six minutes you cannot finish, and nobody has ever left a funeral wishing a grieving brother had spoken for longer.
- Print it large, on paper · Sixteen-point type, double-spaced, one side of each sheet, pages numbered and stapled. Phone screens go dark at the worst moment and hands shake more than you expect. Paper does neither.
- Give a second copy to somebody else · Hand a printed copy to a cousin or a friend before the service and tell them plainly: if I stop, come up and finish it. Almost nobody needs to use it. Knowing it exists is what gets you through.
- Do not read the obituary out loud · The dates, the jobs and the list of survivors are already printed in the program in front of everyone. Your two minutes are for what is not printed anywhere.
The general method, meaning structure, length and how to get through it without breaking down, is in how to write a eulogy, and there are twelve more examples on the main eulogy examples page.
Other relationships
Common questions
How long should a eulogy for a brother be?
Is it all right to be funny about my brother?
What if we were not close, or had not spoken in years?
Should I say how he died?
There are several of us. Which sibling should speak?
What do I do if I break down in the middle?
Keep reading
- How to Write a EulogyA step-by-step way to write and deliver a eulogy, including how long it should be, what to say first, and how to get through it.
- Funeral Speech ExamplesShort funeral speech examples for anyone asked to say a few words, including what to do if you are not the main speaker.
- Funeral PoemsPublic-domain funeral poems you can print in a program or on a card, with any cut marked, plus the modern ones families ask for most, listed by title and poet with a note on which you can print.