Eulogy Example for a Father (Delivered by a Son, About 4 Minutes)

A son's eulogy for his father works best plain. No "legacy", no "he touched so many lives". Three things that happened, the thing they add up to, and a way to end. About 550 words.

Fictional family.

I'm Danny, Jim's younger son. My brother Anthony asked me to do this because he said I was the one who could get through it, which shows you how well he knows me. Bear with me.

Dad was an electrician for thirty-eight years, and if you've driven past a school in this county, he probably wired it. He would point them out from the truck. Every time. "Did that one. Did that one. That one, the gym, that was a bad panel." We heard about the gym panel for thirty years. I could give a talk on the gym panel.

Here is the first thing about my father. When I was sixteen I backed his truck into the mailbox, hard, and then I sat in the driveway for twenty minutes working out how to say it. When I came in, he was at the table, and he said, "Mailbox?" And I said yes. And he said, "Post's rotten anyway. Get the shovel." That was the whole conversation. We put in a new post. He never mentioned it again, not once, not even as a joke, and I have thought about that more than almost anything else he ever did. He knew the difference between a mistake and a person.

Second thing. He coached my Little League team for eleven years. We were terrible. I want to be clear about that, because people will say nice things today and I don't want the record confused: we did not win. Dad's approach to coaching was that every kid played every game, batted in the order they showed up in, and got a Popsicle regardless. The parents who wanted to win took their kids to the other team. Dad's team always had a waiting list.

Third thing. After he retired, the garage became a sort of clinic. People would just show up with things. Lamps. A weed whacker. Mrs. Okafor from two doors down brought a toaster from 1985 and he spent, I am not exaggerating, four hours on it. When I asked him why he didn't just tell her to buy a new one, he looked at me like I'd said something in another language. "She likes that one," he said. That was the whole reason. She liked that one.

So that's my father. He thought a rotten post mattered more than a dented bumper. He thought every kid should bat. He thought if someone liked a thing, it was worth four hours to fix it. He was not a talker. He was a fixer. And I think most of us in this room have something he fixed, and I think we should go home and use it today.

Dad, the truck still runs. We'll keep it that way. Thank you.

Why it works

• The opening line does two jobs: says who you are and gives the room permission to smile.
• Repeated small details ("the gym panel") build intimacy fast and give the audience an in-joke.
• Say plainly what the stories add up to, once, in one short paragraph. Do not explain it further.
• End with an object and a promise. Then say thank you and sit down.
• Four minutes reads at about 550 words. Under five is a kindness to everyone, including you.

More

• For a mothereulogy
• For a motherobituary
• For a fatherobituary
• For a young adultobituary