Eulogy Examples for a Father
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What is different about writing for a father
A lot of fathers never explained themselves. If yours was one of them, you are standing up to summarize a man who spent fifty years declining to be summarized, and the temptation is to fill that space with adjectives: hardworking, strong, a provider, a man of few words. Those words are true of half the men in the cemetery, and they leave your father nowhere to stand. Trade every one of them for something he did.
Evidence is the whole method for a quiet man. He got up at 4:40. He warmed up your mother’s car every winter morning for thirty-one years. He drove you to the practice you had already quit and sat in the lot with the newspaper. A story with a time and a place in it does more work than any sentence about his character, because the room reaches the conclusion itself, and a conclusion the room reaches is one it believes.
Work is usually the other half of him. Fathers were often known publicly through a trade, and the people he worked beside will be in the pews, sometimes in a block near the back. Naming the place, the years and the one job he was proud of does two things at once: it tells his children something they may never have known, and it tells his coworkers that the family understood what that part of his life meant. If he served in the military, say so plainly and let the honors carry the weight instead of your adjectives.
The two hardest sentences for most people are “he never told me he was proud of me” and “he was not an easy man.” Both can be said at a funeral if you say them once, without heat, and follow them with something true rather than something bitter. A eulogy is not the place to settle it. It is the place to acknowledge that there was something to settle, and then to be generous anyway, which is a decision you get to make and will not regret making.
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.
Two minutes, from a son for a father who did not talk much
≈2 minutes · 276 words
My father was not a talker. Anyone who worked with him at Kessler Brothers for thirty-four years is nodding right now.
So I’m not going to stand up here and tell you what he said, because he didn’t say a great deal. I’m going to tell you what he did.
He got up at 4:40. Every morning of my childhood, before I was awake, I heard the kettle go on and the storm door close.
When I was eleven I quit the swim team on a Wednesday. He didn’t argue with me about it. On Saturday morning he drove me to the pool anyway, parked, and read the paper for an hour while I sat next to him in the car not swimming. He did that three weekends in a row. On the fourth one I got out and went in. He never mentioned it again, not once in the next thirty years.
When my mother got sick, he taught himself to cook four things. He got very good at two of them.
He came to every game I ever played and he never shouted from the stands. Afterward, in the car, he would say one sentence about something I had done right, and that sentence would keep me going for a week.
He never told me he was proud of me. About half of you in this room have told me this week that he told you.
Dad, I heard it. Late, but I heard it.
Thank you all for coming. He would have said this was far too much fuss, and then he would have stayed to the end to help stack the chairs.
Five minutes, from a daughter for a father with a trade and a temper
≈5 minutes · 648 words
I’m Hannah, the oldest of Gil’s three. My brothers asked me to do this, which is the first time in forty-two years they have volunteered me for anything without an argument.
My dad was Gilbert Ray Tolliver. Everyone called him Gil. His grandchildren called him Pop, and one of them, for reasons no one has ever explained, called him Boat.
He was born in 1947, in a house his own father built badly. He used to say the kitchen floor sloped enough that you could put a marble down by the stove and find it in the bedroom. He left at eighteen for the Army, served three years, came home, and never talked about the middle part. We asked twice. We stopped asking.
He went to work at Fenner and Doyle Machine in 1971 and stayed until his knees gave out in 2009. Thirty-eight years. He ran a lathe, then ran second shift, then trained everyone who ran second shift after him. There are men in this room who learned their trade standing next to my father, and I would like you to know that he talked about you at our dinner table. By name. He would come home and say, “The Petrosky kid finally got it.” That was as close as he came to affection about anybody, and I promise you it was affection.
He married my mother in 1972. He was not romantic in any way you would notice from the outside. I don’t believe he ever bought her flowers. What he did was go out ten minutes early and warm up her car. Thirty-one winters in this state, and my mother has never once sat down in a cold car.
He built the deck. He built the shed. He built us a playhouse that was, structurally, better than the shed, and after we had all outgrown it he refused to take it down for eleven years.
His humor was so dry that most people missed it entirely. When he was in the hospital in April, a young resident asked him to rate his pain from one to ten. Dad said, “Compared to what?” The resident had no idea what to do with that. Dad let it sit for a good ten seconds and then said, “Give it a four and let’s both get on with our day.”
He was not an easy father all of the time. He had a temper when we were small. He got quieter about it as he got older, and by the time the grandchildren arrived he was a different man than the one who raised us. I have made my peace with both of them. I am saying that out loud because I know some people here are carrying complicated feelings today, and it is all right to be. He would have shrugged and said you’re entitled.
That last week he was mostly asleep. My brother Ray sat with him at night and I took the days. On Tuesday afternoon he woke up, looked around the room, and asked whether the truck was locked. I said it was. He said good, and went back to sleep. Those were the last words my father said to me, and honestly, they were perfect.
Here is what I am taking with me. My dad believed that the way you tell someone you love them is that you show up and you do the thing that needs doing, and you don’t announce it, and you don’t take the credit. That is an unfashionable way to be a person. It is also, when you have been on the receiving end of it for forty-two years, unmistakable.
Dad, the truck is locked. We’ll look after Mom.
Thank you all for coming out today. There is food in the hall. If you’re one of the second-shift men, my mother would like you at the front table.
Ninety seconds, for someone who does not want to speak long
≈90 seconds · 197 words
I’m Marcus. Ed was my dad.
I’m going to keep this short, because I’m not good at this and because he would have wanted his lunch.
Four things, and then I’ll sit down.
My father worked at the same place for twenty-nine years and was late twice, both times on account of me.
He could fix anything with a socket set and one bad word.
He loved my mother in a plain, unshowy way that took me most of my adult life to recognize as remarkable. He carried a photograph of her in his wallet that was thirty years out of date, and when I finally asked him about it he said it still looked like her to him.
And he was kind to people who could do nothing for him, which I have come to think is the only test of a man that counts for anything.
That’s who he was. That is the whole of it.
Thank you for being here. Thank you to the men from the shop for carrying him this morning, and to Reverend Ames, and to everyone who has fed us this week.
Dad. Thank you. I’ll take it from here.
Lines that carry weight
“He was not a man who said things. He was a man who showed up.”
Only use it if the next minute is the evidence. On its own it is a claim. Followed by one story with a date in it, it becomes a portrait.
“He never told me he was proud of me. Several of you have told me this week that he told you.”
One of the truest lines available at a father’s funeral. Say it evenly, once, and move straight on. Do not add a comment about it.
“A man of few words.”
A cliché worth avoiding. It is so worn that the room stops listening. If it is accurate, prove it instead: quote one of the few words, and let people work the rest out.
“He fixed things. That was how he said it.”
For a father whose affection was practical. Works equally for cooking, driving, lending money, shoveling other people’s driveways. Follow it with the specific thing he fixed.
“For thirty-one years he did the same job, he was good at it, and he did not need you to know that.”
Says the work and the modesty in one breath. Swap in his trade and his years and it is ready to use.
“He was my hero.”
True, and largely unusable, because it tells the room about you rather than about him. Say instead the thing he did that a hero would do. The word arrives on its own, in other people’s heads, which is where it counts.
“He was not an easy man all of the time, and I have made my peace with that.”
For a complicated father. Say it once and go straight on. It also quietly gives permission to everyone else in the room carrying the same thing.
“He would say this was far too much fuss, and then he’d have stayed to stack the chairs.”
Warm, usually accurate, and it gets a laugh in a room that needs one. A good closing line when you cannot find an ending.
“If you’re one of the men from the shop, my mother would like you at the front table.”
A practical, generous last line. It gives his coworkers a place at the day and hands the room back to the family.
“Dad. Thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
Very short closings suit a private man. Three sentences, then sit down. Do not try to improve on it.
Delivering it
- Call two of the people he worked with · They know a version of your father you have never met. One phone call usually produces the best line in the whole speech, and it is a call they will be glad to get.
- Ask your mother, or his brother, about the years before you · Where he lived at twenty-two, what his first job was, how the two of them met. Fathers often left all of this out. Somebody living still has it, and this week is when to ask.
- Use his routine and his hands · The 4:40 alarm, the same coffee cup, the pen behind the ear, the way he answered the telephone. Small fixed details put a man back in the room faster than any summary of his character.
- Keep the humor his, not yours · Repeat something he actually said, in the way he said it. A joke written for the occasion lands badly. His own dry remark, delivered flat, lands every time.
- If there are military honors, ask where the eulogy sits · The flag folding and Taps carry enormous weight, and a speech placed straight after them is hard to deliver and hard to hear. Most funeral directors will put the eulogy before.
- Print at 16 point, one side, numbered · No staple. Your hands will shake. Put the last three lines on a page of their own so that you cannot lose them at the end.
- Decide who finishes it if you cannot · Hand a copy to a brother, a cousin or the minister and tell them beforehand. Almost nobody needs the backup, and almost everybody is steadier for having one.
- You are allowed to do less than you think · Ninety seconds is a real eulogy. Four true things and a thank you is a real eulogy. For a private man, a short speech is not a failure of effort. It is a good likeness.
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 father be?
I don’t know much about his early life. What do I do?
Can I say that he was difficult, or that we were estranged?
Should I mention his military service?
Is humor appropriate at a father’s funeral?
What if I get halfway through and stop?
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.