Funeral Speech Examples

My name is Angela. I married Rosemary’s son twenty-two years ago, so I got her secondhand, which is the best way I can describe the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

She never once introduced me as her daughter-in-law. It was always “my daughter Angela,” and then she would wait to see if anybody was going to argue about it.

She taught me to make her pie crust and she left one step out on purpose. She admitted that two Christmases ago and thought it was extremely funny.

Rosemary, I will figure out the step. Eventually.

I am Hector Salas. I managed Dennis at the county road department for eleven years, which means I signed his timesheets and he ran the crew.

Dennis knew that road system better than any map of it. He trained about thirty men. Four of them are supervisors now, and every one of them tells the same story about him standing out in the rain refusing to let anybody knock off early on a job that was almost finished.

He was owed a hundred and sixty hours of vacation he never took. I brought it up every year. He always said he would use it eventually.

Dennis, we should have made you take it. To your family, from all of us at the yard: we are so sorry.

Good afternoon. My name is Priscilla Vaughn and I worked alongside Marcia Delgado at Kelso Insurance for twenty-six years, in the same office, and for nine of those years the same desk cluster.

I want to tell the family something about the eight hours a day you did not see.

Marcia trained almost everybody who came through that office. She had a rule that a new person was not allowed to eat lunch alone during their first week, and she enforced it personally. Some of us were that new person once. All of us later became the one taking somebody else to lunch, because that is how it worked.

She kept a folder of thank-you notes from customers going back to 1999. She never showed it to anybody. We found it on Tuesday.

And she talked about her family constantly. Constantly. We all know what Nicole studied, and where Andre works, and that the dog is named Chestnut and is a menace. You were the whole subject of that office for twenty-six years.

Marcia, thank you for the lunches. We will keep the rule.

I am Tom Aldridge, and I owned the shop where Ernie Wolcott worked for thirty-four years.

I want to be careful not to turn a man’s job into the whole of his life, because Ernie would have hated that. He clocked out at four. He did not take work home. He told me once that a job is what pays for the interesting part of the week, and I have thought about that sentence for twenty years.

But he was extraordinary at it. He could hear a problem in an engine from across the bay. Customers asked for him by name and waited two weeks rather than take an earlier appointment with anybody else.

He also never made a new kid feel stupid. Not once in thirty-four years did I hear Ernie make somebody feel small for not knowing something. In a shop, that is rarer than talent.

To Denise and the boys: he talked about you every day. The interesting part of the week was you.

Gwen Marbury and I met in 1983 in a church nursery, both of us on rotation, both of us hiding from our husbands.

We talked on the phone nearly every day for forty-two years after that. I could not tell you what about. Nothing. Groceries. Weather. A show she wanted me to watch that I never watched.

I have learned this week that the daily nothing was the whole thing. Anybody can show up for the emergency. Gwen showed up for the Tuesdays.

To Michael and the girls: your mother knew every detail of your lives, and she was proud of you in a way that was frankly exhausting to be around.

I don’t know who I am going to call tomorrow. But I am not deleting the number.

I am Devon. Marcus and I were friends from the ninth grade, which is thirty-one years, which is longer than either of us has been anything else.

He was the one with the ideas. I was the one who pointed out that the idea was going to get us in trouble. He was right about maybe forty percent of them, which for him was a strong record.

He got me my first job. He drove eleven hours to my father’s funeral and eleven hours back the same weekend because he had work Monday, and he never mentioned it again.

We had a falling out in 2016 that lasted eight months and was entirely my fault. When I finally called him, he picked up on the second ring and said, “So anyway.” That was the whole conversation about it.

Marcus. So anyway.

My name is Lily, and Ada Chen was my grandmother.

There are nine grandkids and I am the oldest, so I got the most years with her, which the others have already told me is unfair.

Grandma taught me to play mahjong when I was seven and she never once let me win. My mom asked her to, and she said no.

She came to everything. Band concerts. A middle school play where I had four lines. A swim meet in February in the rain. She sat through all of it and she never took a single picture, because she said she wanted to actually watch it.

Grandma, I actually watched too. I remember all of it.

I am Nathan, the oldest of Roy Pelletier’s twelve grandchildren, which around here does not mean much except that I was the first one he took fishing.

My grandfather did not give advice. This drove some of us crazy. You would bring him a problem, and he would listen to the whole thing, and then he would say, “Well.” That was it. That was the counsel.

It took me until about thirty to work out that “well” meant: I heard you, I am not going to solve it for you, and I am not worried about you. Which turned out to be exactly what I needed almost every time.

He built the porch on my parents' house. He built the swing set four of us learned to fall off. He put a new roof on this church in 1994 with three other men, and he mentioned it exactly once, in 2011, and then apologized for bringing it up.

Grandpa. Well.

Thank you all for coming. For those who don’t know me, I am Karen, Doug’s oldest.

We are going to keep this part simple. There is food at the back, there is coffee that is stronger than it looks, and my uncle Ray has the photo albums on the table by the window and would love to be asked about them.

Dad did not want a formal program at this part of the day. He wanted people in a room, eating. So please stay as long as you like, tell us a story about him if you have one, and if you can, tell my mother.

Thank you for being here. It has meant more than we know how to say this week.

Before we go, I want to say one thing on behalf of the family.

Thank you for standing out here with us. It is cold, and the walk was long, and every one of you came anyway.

Elena would have counted the cars. She counted everything. She would have been very satisfied with this turnout, and she would have told us all about it the whole way home.

There is lunch at the Legion hall on Third Street. Please come. She would have been furious if anybody drove home hungry.

If you would raise a glass with me.

To Julian, who never met a rule about a jacket that he agreed with. Who took his coffee so sweet it was essentially a dessert. Who was late to everything except the airport, where he was inexplicably three hours early.

To the eleven years he ran that little theater on Bell Street, and to every person in this room who got put on a stage by him before they were ready.

To Julian.

Good morning. My name is Faye Ostrander and I am Helen’s sister.

Helen wrote this and asked me to read it for her, because she was not sure she could get through it. I told her that was fine, because I am not sure I can either, so we will find out together.

[Read the letter exactly as written. Do not add to it, and do not explain it afterward.]

That was Helen’s. Thank you.

I have a message from Robert’s brother David, who is ninety-one and could not make the trip up from Florida. He asked me to read it word for word, and he was very specific about that.

“Bobby. You were the better ballplayer and I have never once admitted that out loud. I am sorry I am not there. I would have been there fifty years ago and I would have been there twenty years ago, and I want everybody in that room to know that it is only the airplane that stopped me. Save me a seat. Dave”

That is all of it. He asked me to sit down straight afterward, so I will.

My name is ____, and ____ was my ____.

I knew him/her for ____ years, mostly through ____.

The thing I keep coming back to this week is this. [One thing that happened. A day, a place, something he or she said or did. Two or three sentences. Do not explain it, just say what happened.]

That was ____ all over. [One short line about what it showed.]

To [family names]: he/she talked about you constantly. [One true sentence about how the person spoke about their family.]

Thank you.