Eulogy examples

Good morning. My name is Tyler, and Walt Nowak was my grandpa. My mom, Lisa, and my uncle Mike asked me to speak for the family today, and I want to start by thanking every one of you for being here. Grandpa would have counted the cars in the parking lot and been quietly thrilled.

Grandpa was born in 1938 on the south side of Milwaukee, the second of five kids. His dad worked at a tannery and his mom kept the whole house running on one paycheck. Grandpa left school at seventeen, joined the Army, and came home to work as a machinist. He did that for thirty-eight years, and he could tell you the exact thickness of anything just by holding it.

He met my grandma, Dorothy, at a church dance in 1960. She said he stood by the wall for an hour before he came over, and when he finally did, he asked her if she wanted a root beer. They were married for sixty-three years. They had my mom and Uncle Mike, then five grandkids, and two years ago his first great-grandchild, Nora, who he called "the boss" from the day she was born.

If you knew Grandpa, you knew about Friday fish fry. Every Friday for as long as I can remember, he took Grandma to the same supper club out on Highway 100, and he ordered the perch every single time. Once, when I was about twelve, the waitress told him they were out of perch. He thought about it for a long time, then ordered the perch anyway, just in case they found some. They did.

He was a patient teacher. He taught me how to fish on Lake Winnebago, how to change the oil in a car and how to shovel a driveway properly, which in his opinion nobody under fifty knew how to do. He'd stand at the end of the drive in his old Packers stocking cap and point at the bits I'd missed, and then he'd take the shovel and do them himself.

He could also be stubborn. He refused to get a cell phone until 2016, and when Mike finally gave him one, he kept it in the kitchen drawer next to the batteries. As far as we know, it was only ever turned on to check the Packers score.

What I remember most, though, is how he showed up. He came to every game I ever played, including a lot of games I spent sitting on the bench. He'd find me afterward and say, "Good hustle," whether I'd played or not. When I moved to Minneapolis for my first job, he drove over with Grandma and a cooler full of bratwurst, and he spent the whole afternoon fixing a cupboard door I hadn't even noticed was broken.

I want to thank the hospice nurses who came to the house these last few weeks. You looked after Grandpa, and all of us, with so much kindness. And Grandma, we are all here for you, the same way he was always there for us.

Grandpa, we'll go for the perch on Friday. Thank you for everything. We love you, and we'll miss you every day.

My name is Marisol, and Yvonne was my best friend for twenty-nine years. Andre asked me to talk about her as a friend, so that's what I'm going to try to do.

We met on a night shift in 1995. We were both new nurses, and I was sitting in the break room at three in the morning trying not to cry after a hard shift. Yvonne walked in, sat down next to me, and handed me half of her breakfast taco without saying a word. She did that kind of thing her whole life. She noticed when somebody was struggling, and she showed up with food.

She was a nurse for thirty-one years, most of them in labor and delivery. I don't know how many babies she helped bring into this world, but I know that if you stop anyone on the East Side and mention her name, there's a good chance their mama has a story about the nurse who sang to them at four in the morning.

Yvonne loved the Spurs more than most people love their families. She had the same seats in the upper deck for years, and she yelled at the referees so loud that people three rows down would turn around. She also sang in the choir here every Sunday, and I'm fairly sure she was the only alto who ever came to rehearsal in a Tim Duncan jersey.

She was honest with me when nobody else would be. When my marriage ended, she let me sleep on her couch for a month and didn't once tell me it was going to be fine. She just made coffee every morning and asked what I needed that day.

Andre, Keisha, your mom talked about you every single day. She was so proud of you both, and she'd want me to tell you that again in front of everybody, so I just did.

Yvonne, I'm going to keep saving you a seat. Thank you for the taco, and for everything that came after it. I love you, my friend.

Hi, everyone. I'm Amy, and Ken Tanaka was my uncle, my dad's younger brother. My cousins have told you about his life, so I want to tell you about one thing he did for me.

Every summer when I was a kid, Uncle Ken took me on the ferry to Vashon Island. We'd buy clam chowder, sit on the top deck even when it was raining, and he'd point out every boat and tell me its whole history. I found out years later that he was making most of it up. I didn't care then and I don't care now.

He worked at the Port of Tacoma for most of his life, and he knew the name of every crane operator on the waterfront. He was a Mariners fan through a lot of hard seasons, and he never once left a game early.

When I was nineteen and didn't know what I was doing with my life, he took me on that ferry one more time. He didn't give me advice. He just asked what I liked doing, and listened, and at the end he said, "Well, do that then." I'm a marine biologist now, and I think that ferry had something to do with it.

Aunt Joyce, thank you for sharing him with all of us. Uncle Ken, thank you for the chowder, and for listening. I'll ride the ferry for you this summer.

Thank you all for coming. I'm Diane, and Barb was my wife. I've been trying for a week to work out what to say about her, and every time I sat down to write, I ended up telling myself a story about her instead. So I'm going to tell you a few of them.

Barb grew up on a dairy farm in Franklin County, and she never really stopped being a farm kid. She was up at five every morning for the rest of her life, whether there were cows or not. She taught eighth-grade science in Winooski for twenty-seven years, and she kept a tank of salamanders in her classroom that the kids named after the principals.

We met in 1990 at a contra dance. I stepped on her foot twice in the first ten minutes, and she told me later that she decided to marry me the second time, because I apologized so politely. We were together thirty-four years, and when we were finally able to get married, we did it in our own backyard with the neighbors and a very confused dog.

Barb made maple syrup every March from the trees behind our house. It took her weeks of boiling in the shed, and it made about four jars. She gave three of them away and put the last one in the back of the cupboard, and she wouldn't let anyone touch it until Christmas morning. I have one jar left, and I don't know yet when I'll be ready to open it.

She was steady. When things went wrong, she made tea and a list, and then she started at the top. She did that for me more times than I can count.

I want to thank her sister, Carol, who drove up from Albany every weekend this past year, and the nurses at the hospice who treated us both like family.

Barb, the trees are nearly ready to tap. I'll try to do it the way you showed me. I love you, and I always will.