Eulogy Examples for a Mother
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What is different about writing for a mother
Nearly everyone at the service has a mother, and that is the problem. The word arrives with a picture already attached to it, and unless you interrupt that picture in the first thirty seconds, your mother will spend the whole eulogy standing behind the general idea of one. You interrupt it with her name and one concrete fact: what she was called, what she did with her days, what she was actually like to live with.
The room is also mixed in a way it is not at every funeral. Her children are in the front row. Behind them are people who only ever knew her as somebody’s mother. Behind them are the coworkers, neighbors and church friends who knew a woman the family rarely saw. You are introducing her to half the room and confirming her to the other half, and both jobs are done with detail rather than with praise.
A great deal of what mothers did went uncredited, often because they insisted on it. If she worked nights, say the hours. If she went back to school at thirty-eight, say it. If she stayed home, say what that looked like on an ordinary Tuesday in February. “She sacrificed for us” is a summary, and the summary is what everyone in the room already assumes. The particulars are the part only you can supply.
And if she was hard to be raised by, you are not obliged to pretend otherwise. You are also not obliged to say so. Between a whitewash and a reckoning there is a short, true, dignified sentence you can say about a complicated woman. A funeral is the right occasion for that sentence and the wrong occasion for everything that would follow it.
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 daughter for a mother who raised them alone
≈2 minutes · 291 words
My mother’s name was Rosalind Marie Cavanaugh, and for most of my life I did not think of her as having a name at all. She was Mom. She was the sound of the back door at 5:40.
For those of you who knew her from the bank, or from St. Brigid’s, I want to tell you two things about her at home.
The first is that she was never once late. Not to a recital, not to a surgery, not to a parent conference she had to leave a shift to get to. She would arrive early and sit in the parking lot with the radio on. I only found out at her retirement party that she did the same thing at work for twenty-six years.
The second is that she was funny in a way she never got any credit for. Dry, quiet, and usually at the wrong moment. Three days before she died she looked at the four of us standing around her bed and said, “You’re all here. Something must be wrong.”
She raised us mostly on her own after 1994. I am not saying that to open anything up today. I am saying it because I want the arithmetic said out loud once, in a room full of people who loved her. Four kids. One income. One car that was always about to be a problem. And every one of us got to a graduation, and she was early to all four.
She never described any of that as hardship. She described it as Tuesday.
Mom, the lunch is ham. It’s fine. Everybody came. Kevin cried first, which you would have enjoyed.
Thank you all for being here for her. She always noticed who showed up.
Four and a half minutes, from a son for a mother with a life before her children
≈4½ minutes · 594 words
I’m Peter, the middle one. On behalf of my sisters and my dad, thank you for coming out today.
I want to start before us, because my mother had a whole life before she had any of us, and her children are usually the last people to remember that.
Her name was Ana Beatriz Salcedo. She was born in 1949, the youngest of six, in a town small enough that the school and the post office shared a building. She came north at nineteen with a cousin’s address written inside a matchbook and a job waiting for her at a laundry that turned out not to exist. She found a different job that same week. She always told that story as though it were funny.
She met my father at a wedding neither of them wanted to attend. He asked her to dance and she said no. He asked again in October. They were married forty-nine years.
Now the part her children knew.
Mom worked nights at Bellhaven Regional for thirty-one years. Med-surg, then oncology, then back to med-surg, because she said oncology took a piece out of you every time. She would come home at 7:30 in the morning, make our breakfast, sleep until two, and be awake again before the bus. I did not understand until I was about thirty-five what that costs a person over three decades. She never once presented it as a sacrifice. If you called it one, she changed the subject.
She was not soft, and I want to be honest about that in front of people who mostly saw her at church. She had a temper. She kept a grudge against our neighbor Mr. Aldritch for eleven years over a fence. She could look at a report card and say nothing at all, which was worse than anything she could have said.
But here is what I keep coming back to this week.
When my sister Marisol was sixteen, she got into the kind of trouble that in 1988 got a girl talked about. And my mother, who cared enormously what people thought, who ironed our clothes for Mass so that nobody could say a word, walked into that church, sat in the fourth pew where she always sat, and dared anyone to try it. Nobody did. And when we got home she made no speech about it at all. She made lunch.
That was the whole of her. Not a word about it. Just: I am standing here, and this is my kid.
The last two years were hard and I am not going to spend your time on the medical part. I’ll say that she was awake for most of it, that she was funny for most of it, and that when the hospice nurse asked her about her pain she said, “Some. Nothing to write home about.” She had a way of making other people’s jobs easier, right to the end.
So what do we do now. I’ve thought about that all week. I don’t think we honor her by being sad about her, because she had almost no patience for that. I think we honor her by being the one who shows up. Bring the food. Sit in the fourth pew. Don’t make a speech about it.
Mom, you would hate this. All these people. All this fuss. And the church flowers, which you would say cost far too much.
Thank you, all of you. Please come back to the hall afterward and eat something. She would rather have you fed than sad.
Ninety seconds, for someone who does not want to speak long
≈90 seconds · 210 words
I’m Dana. I’m Elaine’s youngest. I’m not going to speak long, because she wouldn’t have.
Three things about my mother.
She answered the phone every single time. Whatever hour it was, whatever was going on at her end, and no matter which one of us it was. All four of us knew that about her. I have learned this week that about nine of our friends knew it too, and two of our ex-husbands.
She could not be talked into anything she did not want to do, and she never once made a scene about it. She would simply, quietly, not do it. My mother could decline an invitation so gracefully that you thanked her for it.
And she was proud of us out loud. To strangers. In the grocery store. At length, and whether or not we had earned it that particular year.
That is three. Here is a fourth, because she would want it said in front of everybody: she was a genuinely frightening driver, and she never once admitted it.
That’s what I have. Thank you for coming, and thank you for the cards and the food and for filling this room the way you have.
Mom, we’re all right. We’ll look after Dad. Go on now.
Lines that carry weight
“She was the person I called first. About everything. Until Tuesday.”
Works when it is literally true. The specific day is what makes it land; “she was always there for me” does not.
“Her name was Rosalind. She had that name for twenty-three years before any of us started calling her Mom.”
Use it early. It stops her from being only a role for the rest of the speech, and it earns you the right to talk about her as a person.
“If you are in this room, she talked about you.”
Good near the end. It gives everyone present a place in her life without you having to name a single one of them.
“She fed people. That was how she said it.”
For a mother whose love was practical rather than spoken. Follow it immediately with one concrete instance, or it stays a slogan.
“I’m going to read this. If I look up, I won’t get through it.”
Say it once at the start and the room settles. Nobody minds, and nobody ever has.
“She was not a saint, and she’d be the first to tell you so.”
For a mother who was difficult. Honest without opening anything up, and it frees you to tell a true story instead of a polite one.
“Heaven gained an angel.”
A cliché worth avoiding. It is the most common line at any funeral, it says nothing about your mother in particular, and attention drifts the moment people hear it. If faith belongs in the speech, name her faith instead: the pew she sat in, the hymn she asked for.
“She would have loved this.”
Another cliché, and usually untrue. Most mothers would have hated the fuss and the cost of the flowers. “She would have hated this” gets a real laugh and a real breath from the room, and it is almost always the accurate line.
“She would want me to thank you for coming. So: thank you for coming.”
A clean ending when you cannot find one. It closes the speech without asking you to summarize a whole person.
“We’re all right, Mom. We’ll look after each other.”
Speaking to her directly at the very end. Do it once, in two short sentences, then stop and sit down. Any longer and the room cannot carry it.
Delivering it
- Call one of her friends before you write anything · A neighbor, a coworker, someone from church. Ask for one thing about her you would not know. Children know their mother from the inside only, and a single outside detail changes the whole speech.
- If several of you are speaking, divide the years · One takes her early life, one the middle, one the last stretch. Three minutes each. Otherwise all three of you will tell the same kitchen story and the room will hear it three times.
- Name the work she actually did · The shift, the second job, the year she went back to school, or the fact that she stayed home and what that meant in practice. “She worked hard” is a category. The night shift is a fact.
- Print it at 16 point, double spaced, one side only · Number the pages and do not staple them. Your hands will shake, and you will not be able to read your usual print through tears.
- Give a copy to someone in the front row · Pick a person who could stand up and finish it. Tell them beforehand. Knowing there is a backup is usually the reason you never need one.
- Decide now what you will do if you cry · The plan is simple. Stop, put both hands on the lectern, breathe all the way out, and start the sentence again from the beginning. The silence feels much longer to you than to anyone sitting down.
- Read it out loud twice, standing up · Once alone, once to one other person. You will find the sentence you cannot say. Cut it, or move it earlier while you still have some composure left.
- You are allowed to do less than you think · Two minutes is a full eulogy. Three true sentences and a thank you is a full eulogy. Nobody has ever left a service wishing the family had spoken for longer.
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 mother be?
My mother and I were not close. What do I say?
Can more than one of us speak?
Should I read it or speak from notes?
Is it all right to be funny about my mother?
What if I break down and cannot finish?
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.