Eulogy Examples for a Wife
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What is different about writing for a wife
The most common mistake in a eulogy for a wife is not a bad sentence. It is a missing person. She kept the house running. She remembered every birthday. She looked after her mother for four years. All true, all worth saying, and all of it describes what she did for other people rather than who she was when nobody needed anything from her. Somewhere in the eulogy she should have an opinion, a skill, a job she was good at, something she was stubborn about, and something that made her laugh in a way she was embarrassed by.
The second thing is that you only know one version of her. There are women in that room who knew her at work, at church, or in the twenty years before you met, and your picture of her is missing whole rooms. Call three of them this week and ask one question: what was she like when I was not there? Use their exact words. That is almost always the part of the eulogy people repeat to each other afterward.
There is a widespread belief that a husband at a funeral should be either composed and brief or eloquent and moving, and either way should hold it together. In practice the eulogies that land are the plain ones. Short sentences. A fact, then what it meant. When you feel the polish going out of it, that is usually the moment it starts working.
If she was ill for a long time, the last stretch will feel like the biggest thing in your head, because it is the most recent and it took everything you had. It is still a small share of her life. Say plainly how long it was and how she handled it, in a sentence or two, and then go back to the forty or sixty years that were not that.
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, spoken by her husband
≈2½ minutes · 324 words · spoken by her husband
Dot cut hair in this town for thirty-four years, and several people have told me this week that they said things in that chair they never said anywhere else. I believe it. She had that effect on people. She also could not keep a secret about a surprise party to save her life, so I want to be clear: your confidences were safe, your birthdays were not.
We were married thirty-nine years. I would like to say something about who she was underneath all of that, because I think the shop and the family took up so much room that people missed it.
Dot had strong opinions and no interest in hiding them. She thought the town was wasting money on the wrong things and she said so at the meetings, out loud, with her hand up. She read three newspapers. She could not stand anybody who was rude to a waitress, and she would say something about it, and I would sit there wishing I were braver.
She was funny. Not joke funny. She just saw the ridiculous thing first, every single time, and she would find me across a room and I would know exactly what she was thinking and have to leave.
She was sick for eight months. She handled it about how you would expect from her: badly for the first few weeks, and then with a kind of practicality that was hard to watch. She organized things. She wrote down where the passwords were. She told me I should remarry, and then said she would take it back if I looked too pleased about it.
I do not know what I am going to do now. That is probably not a thing to say at a funeral. But it is what is true, and Dot never had any use for people who said the polite thing instead of the real one.
Thirty-nine years. I would do it again tomorrow.
Four and a half minutes, for a wife who died young, with young children in the room
≈4½ minutes · 592 words · spoken by her husband
Cori would want me to say up front that she would have written this better than I am about to, and she would have been right, so let us all accept that and move on.
She was forty-three. That is the fact underneath everything today and I am not going to dance around it. But I want to spend the next few minutes on the forty-three years rather than on the six months, because she would have insisted, and because the six months were not the interesting part of her.
Cori was a veterinarian. She decided that at seven years old, which is unusual, because most of us change our minds. She never did. She put herself through eight years of school working nights, and she opened the practice on Ridge Street at thirty-one with a loan I thought was insane and a waiting room she painted herself, the wrong green, on purpose.
She was extraordinarily good at it. I have no qualifications to judge that, but I have spent this week reading messages from people I have never met, and the same sentence keeps coming up: she did not rush me. One woman wrote that Cori sat on the floor of the exam room with her for forty minutes while she made up her mind about a sixteen-year-old dog. Sat on the floor. That was a Tuesday, in the middle of a full day, and she never mentioned it to me.
She had a temper about exactly two things: cruelty to animals, and people who parked across the sidewalk. The second one was out of all proportion. She knew that and did it anyway.
Theo. Nora. I want to talk to you for a minute, and everybody else can listen in.
Your mom was funnier than me and smarter than me, and she was the one who knew what you needed before you knew it yourself. You are going to worry about forgetting her. You will not forget her. But some of it goes soft at the edges, so I am going to tell you three things now, out loud, in front of everyone, so that you have them.
She sang badly and loudly and only in the car. She kept every single thing you ever made her. There are four boxes in the basement, labeled, and one day when you are older we will go through them together. And she told me more than once that having the two of you was the only decision in her life she never second-guessed.
Theo, last week you asked me if she was frightened. She was. She told me so. And then she made a list, because that is what she did with fear, and one of the things on that list was your Halloween costume for this year, which she has already bought, and which I am not allowed to tell you about.
We had sixteen years. I met her at a friend’s cookout where she was arguing with somebody about whether a hot dog counts as a sandwich. She won. I asked her out in the driveway afterward and she said, “took you long enough,” and we had never met before that afternoon.
I do not have a wise ending. She would be annoyed if I reached for one. She would say: thank everyone for coming, tell them where the food is, and go home with the kids.
So. Thank you for coming. The food is in the hall next door. And I am going to go home with the kids.
Ninety seconds, when you know you cannot talk for long
≈90 seconds · 212 words · spoken by her husband
I am going to be brief, because I know what I can do and what I cannot.
Eleanor and I were married fifty-eight years. She kept the books for a lumber yard, then for a church, and then for anyone in the neighborhood whose taxes would not come out right. She was very good with numbers and very bad with directions, and in fifty-eight years she never once conceded the second part.
She had one rule: nobody eats alone. If she heard that somebody was on their own on a Sunday, they got a phone call whether they wanted one or not. There are people in this room who were fed by my wife for years, and I want them to know that she looked forward to it. It was not charity. She liked the company.
People have asked me a lot this week how I am doing. I do not know yet. Fifty-eight years is most of a life and I am not going to be able to describe it in the time I have. So I will say only this: I got the better end of the deal, everybody knew it, and Eleanor was too kind to mention it more than about once a year.
Thank you all for coming.
Lines that carry weight
“I am not going to do her justice, so I am going to tell you three true things instead.”
A good opening for a man who does not speak in public. It lowers the bar in front of everyone, and then you clear it.
“You knew her at the office. I want to tell you what she was like when nobody needed anything from her.”
Sets up the part only you can give. Follow it with something small and domestic: what she did on a Saturday morning, what she said to the dog.
“She had opinions and she did not keep them to herself.”
Restores her as a person with a mind of her own. Especially useful for a woman whose public role was quiet or caregiving.
“She was funny. Not joke funny. She just saw the ridiculous thing first.”
Works when everyone in the room knew her humor and nobody has said it out loud yet.
“Her name was Ruth Halloran long before it was Ruth Mercer, and she was already most of who she turned out to be.”
For a wife whose family, first career and twenties deserve to be in the room. Names are the quickest way to put them there.
“To our children: most of what I know about raising you, I learned by watching your mother do it.”
For a husband speaking with children present. Say it straight to them by name, then keep moving before it takes your voice.
“I will stop there, because she would already be making the wind-it-up face.”
A closing that finishes on warmth rather than grief. Only use it if she really did have a look like that, or it reads as a device.
“She was my better half.”
Retire it. It has worn smooth, and it quietly turns her into an accessory. If she made you better, name the way: “she was the reason I called my mother every Sunday.”
“She was an angel.”
Avoid. It removes her faults, and the faults are where the love shows. A woman who was occasionally impossible and always worth it is a person. An angel is a greeting card.
“She lost her battle with cancer.”
Leave the battle language out. “She was sick for eleven months” is plainer and does not suggest she could have tried harder.
Delivering it
- Call three of her friends before you write anything · Ask one question: what was she like when I was not there? Her work friend, her church friend, and the woman she walked with will each hand you a different person, and all three of them are her. Write down their exact words and use them.
- Give her a first sentence of her own · Open with what she did and what she was good at, before you get to what she was to you. It tells the room this is a eulogy about her rather than about your marriage, and everything you say afterward lands harder because of it.
- Include one flaw · One, small and affectionate and true. She was late to everything. She could not be told a thing about driving. A woman with no faults is not recognizable, and the room relaxes the moment they hear the real her.
- Write the way you talk · Short sentences. State the fact, then say what it meant. Read the draft out loud and cut anything you would never say to a person’s face. The formal register is the first thing that fails when your voice goes.
- Speak to the children directly, then come back to the room · If your children are young, one short passage addressed to them by name is the most powerful thing in a spouse’s eulogy. Keep it to about thirty seconds and then turn back to everyone else, or you will not get through the rest.
- One sentence for the illness · The last months are the loudest thing in your head and the smallest part of her life. Say what happened plainly, once, and then return to the woman she was for the other fifty years.
- Practice only the first line and the last line · You do not need to rehearse the whole thing, and reading it over and over at home will wear you out before the day. Learn the opening so you can begin without looking down, and the closing so you can end without trailing off. Read the middle straight from the page.
- Decide who takes over if you stop · Hand a copy to a brother-in-law or a close friend beforehand and tell them plainly: if I cannot finish, come up. Having said it out loud is usually what makes it unnecessary.
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
I have never spoken in public. Should I still give the eulogy for my wife?
How do I write about her without making it all about me?
She was ill for years and I was her caregiver. How much of that belongs in the eulogy?
Should I mention her first marriage, or her children from it?
What if things were not good between us before she died?
Can I read a poem or a scripture passage instead?
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.