Eulogy for Dad: How to Write It, With Examples

Thank you all for coming. I'm Nate, Walter's son.

If you ever needed to find my dad, you went to the garage. Not the house. The garage. He had a radio out there that only got one station, a coffee can full of screws that he swore were organized, and a stool with a cracked vinyl seat that he wouldn't let anybody replace.

Dad worked thirty-four years at the cotton gin. He came home tired almost every night. And almost every night, he went out to that garage anyway, because somebody's bike had a flat or a neighbor's mower wouldn't start or I'd broken something I wasn't supposed to touch.

When I was fourteen I wrecked his good truck. Backed it right into the mailbox and then, in a panic, pulled forward into the fence. I walked into the garage expecting the worst. He looked at me for a long time. Then he said, "Well. Grab the toolbox." We spent the whole weekend fixing that fence together. He never brought it up again. Not once in twenty-six years.

That's who he was. He didn't lecture. He handed you a hammer and showed you how to make it right.

Dad wasn't a big talker. I can count on one hand the times he told me he loved me out loud. But I can't count the times he showed me. Every jump start. Every oil change. Every Saturday in that garage with the one-station radio playing old country songs he pretended not to like.

I've got the stool now. The cracked one. I'm not replacing it either.

Dad, thank you for showing me how to fix things. Including myself, a few times. I love you. I'll keep the radio on.

Hi. I'm Aisha, Raymond's daughter.

My dad had one rule he repeated more than any other: "Leave it better than you found it." He said it about campsites, borrowed cars, kitchens, and once, memorably, about a public restroom at a gas station in Amarillo.

He lived it, too. He coached Little League for eighteen years, long after his own kids had aged out. He picked up trash on his walks. He tipped well and remembered waitresses' names. He drove the church van every Sunday so the older folks at Heritage Village could make it to service.

When I moved into my first apartment, he showed up with a toolbox and spent the whole afternoon fixing things the landlord was supposed to fix. A sticky door. A dripping faucet. A smoke detector that chirped all night. I asked him why he bothered, since I'd only be there a year. He said, "Somebody's going to live here after you, Sunshine." That was Dad. Always thinking about the next person.

He was also terrible at golf and wonderful at pancakes. He sang loudly and badly in the car. He called me "Sunshine" until the day he died, even when I was a grown woman with a mortgage and a bad attitude. On rainy days he'd call just to say, "Somebody has to bring the sunshine, and it's not going to be the weatherman."

Dad, you left this world better than you found it. You left us better too. We'll try to keep up the habit.

Love you. Goodbye for now.

Good afternoon. I'm Tommy, the middle kid, which Dad said made me "the one who'll be fine." Let's find out.

My father, Hector, had a joke for every situation and a bad pun for most of them. You all know this. If you ever told him you were hungry, he'd say, "Hi Hungry, I'm Dad." He did this to his own children for forty years. He did it to the hospice nurse last Tuesday. She laughed, by the way. He counted that as a win.

Dad also had a complicated relationship with the thermostat. Nobody touched it. If you touched it, he knew. He'd walk in, squint at the wall, and say, "Somebody's paying to heat the whole neighborhood." It was set to 66 in January. We wore coats inside. He wore a T-shirt.

And he loved the Texas Tech Red Raiders with a devotion that was honestly a little scary. He wanted us to mention that. He'd also want us to mention that they should have run the ball more last season.

But under all of it, the puns and the thermostat and the yelling at the TV, was a man who would drop anything for his family. When my daughter was born early and spent three weeks in the NICU in Lubbock, Dad drove up every single day. Sixty miles each way. He'd sit in the waiting room doing crossword puzzles and telling the nurses bad jokes, just so we wouldn't be alone.

That's who he was. Corny, cheap about the heat, and present. Always present.

Dad, I hope heaven has a thermostat and nobody touches it. We love you. We'll keep telling your terrible jokes.

I'm Kyle. Dan was my dad.

I'm not good at this. Dad wasn't either. He'd want me to keep it short, so I will.

I made a list this week of things my dad taught me. Here are some of them.

How to bait a hook. How to back up a trailer. How to change a tire on the side of Highway 84 at night with a flashlight in my teeth.

How to shake a man's hand and look him in the eye. How to show up on time, which for Dad meant fifteen minutes early.

How to say sorry when you're wrong, even if it takes you a couple days to work up to it. He wasn't perfect at that one. Neither am I. But he tried, and he taught me to try.

How to keep going when work is bad and money is tight. He did that a lot of years and never let us feel it.

How to sit with somebody who's hurting without saying much. When my dog died, I was nine. Dad didn't give a speech. He just sat on the back step with me until it got dark.

How to love your wife. He held my mom's hand in the truck every time they drove anywhere for forty-two years. I noticed. I think we all did.

How to drink coffee black and complain that it's too hot. Every single morning.

That's my list. It's not everything. It's what I've got.

Thanks, Dad. For all of it. I'll see you down the road.