Eulogy Examples for a Friend
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What is different about writing for a friend
A friend has no standing. There is no line in the obituary that says survived by, and your name would not be in it. Nobody sends you a card, work expects you back on Monday, and you may be sitting six rows from the front at the funeral of the person you spoke to most in the world. That is the strange position you are writing from, and it is worth naming to yourself before you start, because it is the reason this is harder than people assume.
It is also the reason you were asked. Parents know the childhood, a spouse knows the house, and you know the person as they chose to be when nobody was obliged to be around. The bad apartment, the drive, the job they hated, the year they were not doing well. Do not recite the biography. The dates and the jobs are in the program and the family already has them. Your two minutes are for the things only you saw.
Part of your job at that lectern is handing the room back. Say the widow’s name. Say the children’s names. Say one true thing you saw of the marriage or of the care in the last year. A eulogy from a friend that never mentions the family reads, without meaning to, as a claim on the person, and families remember it. Say it early rather than tacking it on at the end.
Then there is the friendship the family does not fully know: the recovery meeting, the years abroad, the ex-partner, the person whose relationship was never openly acknowledged in that family. You can be entirely truthful about your own part without disclosing anything that was not yours to disclose. “I knew him from Tuesday nights” and then the real content, which is what he was like, is a complete and honorable eulogy. What you owe the room is honesty about him, not an explanation of you.
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 and a half minutes, from a neighbor for a man who lived alone
≈2½ minutes · 313 words · spoken by a neighbor
I’m Ed Halloran. I lived next door to Marty for twelve years. His sister Jeanette asked me to say something, which I did not expect, and which I do not take lightly.
Twelve years is not a long friendship. There are people in this room who knew Marty for sixty. So I am only going to tell you what I actually saw, which is a man on his own, on a street, day after day, and what he chose to do with that.
He shoveled. Not just his own walk. Mine, and the Petersens’, and the corner house where the young couple never quite learned. He did it early so nobody would have to thank him, and if you caught him at it he would say the machine needed the exercise.
He got my son’s baseball off the roof of his garage four separate times and never once mentioned it to me.
He ate his dinner at 4:45. He watched the news at a volume you could hear from the sidewalk. He kept a bird feeder that was, by his own admission, mostly for squirrels.
Twice in twelve years he came over, knocked, and asked if I had a minute. Both times it was the anniversary of Doreen’s death, and both times we sat on my step and talked about hockey for an hour. He never said what the day was. I looked it up after the second one.
Jeanette, that is what I know about your brother. He was on his own for eleven years and he did not turn mean about it. I do not think that is a small thing. I think it might be one of the hardest things a person can do.
The street is going to be quieter. Somebody is going to have to teach the young couple to shovel.
Thank you for having me up here.
Four and a half minutes, from a best friend of thirty-eight years
≈4½ minutes · 608 words · spoken by her closest friend
I’m Roz Kimball. Deb and I met in 1988, in the break room of a company that no longer exists, over a vending machine that took both our dollars. We were twenty-three. We were friends for thirty-eight years, which means I knew her longer than I have known my own husband, and about eight times better.
Michael, Erin, Owen. I want to say this at the start. She was your wife and your mother first, and I am not up here to compete with that. I am up here because I have thirty-eight years of a Deb you mostly did not get to see, which is Deb off duty, and somebody has to tell you about her.
Here is what she was like in 1988.
She owned one blazer, which she believed was fooling people. She could not parallel park and would not be taught. She had a laugh that started before the joke finished, so she often laughed at the wrong part and then had to be told the rest.
We were broke in a way that was funny at the time and would not be funny now. We split a phone bill. We drove to the shore in a car with no reverse gear, which meant we had to choose our parking spaces philosophically.
And she was already, at twenty-three, the person she was at sixty-one. I want to be precise about that, because people say “she never changed” as a compliment without meaning anything by it. Here is what I mean.
In 1990 a woman in our office was being treated badly by a manager. Everybody knew. Everybody was sorry about it in the hallway. Deb went to human resources on her own, on a Wednesday, put it in writing, and signed it, and had a reputation for a while afterward. She never told me she was going to do it. She simply was not able to leave it alone. She did that same thing, in some form, about twice a year, for the entire time I knew her.
She met Michael in 1993. Michael, I am going to say this in front of everybody. She called me from a parking lot after your third date and said, “I think this one is going to be a problem.” I asked what kind of problem. She said, “The permanent kind.”
I was there when the kids were born. I was there for the bad year, and Erin, you know which one I mean, and you and I are the only two people in this room who do, and we are going to leave it there.
For the last two years I drove her on Wednesdays. That was the arrangement. Michael had Mondays, her sister had Fridays, I had Wednesdays. It was the best standing appointment of my life. We did not talk about the illness much. We talked about people. We were unkind about a small number of them and I regret none of it.
Three weeks ago she asked me to do this and I said I would rather not, and she said, “Well, you will be doing it anyway.” Which is the most Deb sentence I can give you.
So here is what I want to leave you with. Deb was not a saint. She was not especially patient and she was consistently wrong about restaurants. What she was, was loyal in a way that cost her things. That is much rarer than nice. Nice is easy.
Michael, Erin, Owen: I am not going anywhere. I will still be here on Wednesdays.
Thank you all for coming. She would want you to eat something.
Ninety seconds, from a friend who knew a part of his life the family did not see
≈90 seconds · 190 words · short enough to get through
My name is Tom. I knew Gary from Tuesday nights. Most of you will not know what that means, and Gary’s family has told me I do not have to explain it, so I am not going to.
What I will say is that I knew him for nine years in a room where people tell the truth, and I never once heard him say a false thing in it.
He was the one who got there early and made the coffee. Badly. Every week for nine years.
He answered the phone on my worst night, four years ago, at twenty past one in the morning, and stayed on it until it got light. He never brought it up again. Not once, not even as a joke.
Karen, Danielle: he talked about you both constantly. You should know that a room full of people you have never met knows your names, and knows what you did for him.
That is all I have. I only knew one part of him. But I knew that part well, and it was a good one.
Gary, thanks for the coffee. It was terrible.
Lines that carry weight
“His sister asked me to speak, and I want you to know I don’t take that lightly.”
Establishes your standing in one sentence. Say it in the first fifteen seconds and the room stops wondering who you are.
“I knew a version of her you mostly didn’t get to see, and somebody has to tell you about it.”
The plainest statement of why a friend is at the lectern at all. It also stops you from drifting into the biography.
“She was your wife and your mother first. I’m not up here to compete with that.”
Say it early, by name, not as an afterthought at the end. It is the line that makes everything you say afterward welcome.
“I only knew one part of him. But I knew it well.”
For a friendship from work, from service, from recovery, or from a stretch of life the family was not in. Honest, and it needs no further explanation.
“We met over a vending machine that took both our dollars.”
An exact, ordinary beginning is worth ten times more than “we were inseparable from day one.” Use whatever the real first moment was, however unimpressive.
“He was my best friend.”
True, and it describes your loss rather than him. It is a fine sentence only if the next one is something he actually did. On its own it is where a friend’s eulogy usually stalls.
“She was loyal in a way that cost her things. That’s rarer than nice.”
For a friend who was not soft. A room that has heard four people call her lovely will sit up for a sentence like this.
“Gone too soon. Gone but never forgotten.”
Both are clichés and both are dead air in a room. They work on a card because a card is short. Spoken, they cost you ten seconds of the room’s attention and tell nobody anything about him.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll still be here on Wednesdays.”
The most useful thing a friend can say at a funeral, and the one the family will hold on to. Only say it if you intend to do it, and then put it in your calendar before you leave the parking lot.
“If you knew him from the shop, you knew a different man than his kids knew. Both of them were him.”
Good early on in a mixed room. It gives everybody present permission to have known a different version, and it takes the pressure off you to be definitive.
Delivering it
- Ask the family before you write a word · Ask who else is speaking, how long you have, and whether there is anything they would rather you left alone. Ask again the day before. Orders and timings change constantly in the last forty-eight hours.
- Run any funny story past one family member · The test is whether you would tell it in front of his mother, and you are about to. Most stories pass. The one that does not is usually about drinking, an ex, or money, and you will know it when you say it out loud.
- Skip the biography · Dates, schools, job titles and towns are in the program and the family knows them better than you do. Spend your whole two minutes on things only you were present for.
- Name the family out loud · The widow, the children, the parents, the sibling who did the caring. By name, early. It costs fifteen seconds and it is the difference between a tribute and a claim.
- Explain the nickname or drop it · One short line of explanation, or leave it out entirely. An unexplained in-joke tells forty people in the room that they were not in it, and that is the opposite of what you came to do.
- Say what you will still do · The Wednesday drive, the yard, the phone call on the anniversary. Say it in the eulogy only if you mean it, and then set the reminder before you drive home.
- Keep it to two or three minutes · Friends usually speak after the family, in a room that has already been through a great deal. Short and exact is a kindness, and it is what people remember.
- You are allowed to do less than you think · One story, told properly, is a whole eulogy. You are also allowed to say no. Telling the family you cannot do it is not a betrayal, and it is much better said now than discovered at the lectern.
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
Can a friend give the eulogy?
How long should a friend speak for?
I barely know the family. Should I still mention them?
The family does not know how we knew each other. What do I say?
I was closer to him than his family was. How do I handle that?
Is it all right to be funny?
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.