How to Write a Eulogy for Your Father
A structure you can fill in tonight, a finished example, and the order to write it in. Start with the story, never with the opening.
Fill-in template
My name is YOUR NAME and NAME was my father.
Most of you knew Dad as THE PUBLIC THING. What I want to tell you about is THE SMALLER, TRUER THING.
ONE STORY. Somewhere specific, one other person, one thing said or done.
That was Dad exactly. THE TRAIT THE STORY PROVES, and he would have hated me saying so.
He leaves NAME EVERYONE. And he leaves THE THING THAT CARRIES ON.
CLOSING LINE, spoken to him.
A finished example, about three minutes
Invented for this site as a model. Replace every fact.
My name is Sam and Gerald was my father.
Most of you knew Dad from the allotment, where he grew more runner beans than any household could eat and gave the rest away at the gate. What I want to tell you about is the shed.
The shed had a rule. If you came in, you had to hold something. A torch, a length of wood, a jam jar of screws — it did not matter. I spent about four hundred hours of my childhood holding things in that shed, and I do not remember him explaining a single one of them. Years later I worked out what it was for. He was not teaching me joinery. He was making sure I stayed, and he did not know how to ask.
That was Dad exactly. He never said the thing; he built a reason for you to be there instead.
He leaves Mum, Christine, married fifty-one years. He leaves me and my sister Joanne. He leaves four grandchildren, three of whom have held a torch in that shed. And he leaves an allotment that the committee have already agreed to keep under his name for the season.
Thanks, Dad. I will hold the torch.
Questions that produce a story
- 1
What did he do that he never explained?
- 2
What did he teach you without saying he was teaching you?
- 3
What was in his pockets?
- 4
What did he say every single time you left the house?
- 5
Where would he be at three o’clock on a Saturday?
If the relationship was difficult
Plenty of people write a eulogy for a father they did not get on with. The room usually knows.
- 6
Say the true thing narrowly. "He was not an easy man, and he was my father" is enough.
- 7
Choose a story that is affectionate without being false. There is almost always one.
- 8
You are allowed to keep the rest. A eulogy is not a full account and nobody is owed one.
Questions people actually ask
What should a eulogy for a father include?
One story, the trait that story proves, the family he leaves, and a closing line spoken to him. That is the entire structure and it is enough.