Short Eulogy Examples You Can Read in Two Minutes

I'm Megan, Joyce's daughter. I'll keep this short, which Mom would find hilarious, because I have never kept anything short in my life.

My mother sang in the car. Every car, every trip, every song on the radio, and she never once knew the right words. She just made them up, loudly, with total confidence. My brother and I spent our childhoods in the back seat of a blue Taurus begging her to stop. She'd turn it up.

When I left for college, she drove me six hours to Fort Collins and sang the entire way. She carried boxes up three flights, made my bed, and cried in the parking lot. Then she rolled the window down, turned the radio all the way up, and sang the wrong words all the way out of the lot so I'd laugh instead of cry. It worked.

She was a school secretary for twenty-four years, a terrible cook, and the person I called first about everything.

Mom, I drove here today with the radio on. I sang. I got the words wrong. I think you'd be proud.

I'm Chris, Frank's son. If you ever spent an afternoon with my dad, you heard him say three words: "Let's go see."

A new road opened past the county line? Let's go see. A storm rolling in over the wheat? He'd grab his keys, the dog, and me, and we'd drive to the top of Calloway Hill to watch it come.

Dad drove a feed truck for thirty years, and I think he never got tired of looking out the windshield. He wanted to know what was over the next rise. He wasn't a talker. On those drives we might go an hour without a word. But he'd point at things. A hawk on a fence post. A house he helped frame in 1979. The spot where he asked my mom to marry him, which was, I'm sorry to say, a Sonic.

I didn't appreciate those drives at fifteen. It took having my own kids to understand he was showing me the world the only way he knew how, one gravel road at a time.

The last week in the hospital, he asked me what it looked like outside. I described the parking lot, the clouds, a guy chasing his hat across the lot. He listened to every word.

Dad, I don't know what's over this next rise. But you taught me how to look. Let's go see.

I'm Owen, one of Nana Ruth's eleven grandkids. Nana taught every one of us to play gin rummy, and she never let a single one of us win.

Not once. Not when we were six, not when we cried, not on our birthdays. She'd lay down her cards, say "Gin, sweetheart," and start shuffling again. My cousin Ellie said it was child abuse. Nana said it was character building.

I played her every Sunday from the time I was seven. I finally beat her when I was sixteen, at her kitchen table, with a pot of decaf going. She looked at my cards for a long time. Then she said, "Well. Now you know you earned it." She was prouder of me that afternoon than she was at my graduation.

That's what Nana gave us. She never pretended. If she said you did something well, you had.

Nana, I've got the deck in my coat pocket. Deal me in sometime.

I'm Matt. Kevin and I ran together every Saturday at 5:30 in the morning for twelve years. Rain, snow, the week after his kids were born. Six miles, same loop, same stop.

The stop was the footbridge over Mill Creek, right at mile two. We'd lean on the railing and catch our breath, and that's where we talked. Not about much at first. Work, football, whose knee hurt worse. But over twelve years, everything got said on that bridge. His divorce. My dad's diagnosis. The night he almost lost his business. The morning he told me he'd met Grace.

I'll be honest, Kevin was a slow runner. Painfully slow. I used to give him a hard time about it. He'd say, "We're not racing, we're talking." He was right about that, like he was about most things that mattered.

I ran the loop alone last Saturday. I stopped at the bridge. I didn't know what to do, so I just told him about my week.

Kevin, I'll keep stopping at the bridge. We're not racing. We're talking.

My name is Lisa Brandt. I manage the Cedar Grove Apartments, where Vernon lived in unit 4B for nineteen years. I'll be honest: I didn't know Vernon well. I'm not sure any of us did. He nodded, he paid his rent on the first, and he kept to himself.

But since he passed, people keep knocking on my office door to tell me things.

Mrs. Kim in 2A told me a sack of tomatoes showed up on her mat every summer, and she never knew who left it until Vernon's garden plot sat empty this year. The Garcia boys told me he fixed their bike chains on the sidewalk and wouldn't take a dollar. Somebody kept the bird feeder by the mailboxes full for nineteen years. That was Vernon too.

He didn't have family in town, so a few of us are here instead. I think he'd be surprised by how many of us came.

Vernon, we didn't know you well. But you knew us. You noticed. Thank you for the tomatoes. We'll fill the feeder.

Look around. You're all wearing yellow. Glo would be thrilled. She left very clear instructions: no black, no sad songs, and the food had better be good. We did our best on all three.

I'm Diane, Glo's little sister. For sixty-eight years, she was the loudest, brightest thing in any room, and she dressed the part. Yellow raincoat. Yellow kitchen. A yellow Volkswagen she drove until the floor rusted through and she could see the road going by under her feet. She called it air conditioning.

Glo threw a party for everything. The first tomato of the summer. The day her mortgage was paid off. If something good happened, Glo thought it deserved a cake.

Here's the part she wouldn't want me to say. When our mother died, Glo didn't throw a party. She came and slept on my couch for a week and held my hand at night. The parties were real. So was that. She knew when the room needed light, and she knew when it just needed somebody to stay.

So I'm asking you to do one thing for her. Turn to the person next to you, the one in yellow, and tell them one good thing that happened to you this year. Glo would say it deserves a cake.

Glo, this one's for you. It's a good party.