Funeral poems for mom

Short funeral poems for mom

Short verses are easier to read when your voice isn’t steady, and they fit on the back page of a program or on a memorial card. The four below were written for this site. Change a word or a detail so they sound like her.

The first half of Isaiah 66:13 is one of the few places the Bible compares God to a mother. On a prayer card, many families print only the words up to “comfort you.”

Poems about a mother’s love

These two poems were written by grown children to their mothers. They say plainly what a lot of people at the service will be feeling.

Kipling printed this as the dedication to his 1891 novel The Light That Failed. It takes under a minute to read, and the repeated line gives a reader something to hold on to. It suits a mother who stood by a child through trouble.

Rossetti wrote this sonnet for her mother, Frances, and printed it at the front of A Pageant and Other Poems in 1881, when her mother was about 80. The last lines, about love outlasting “time and change and mortal life and death,” make it a good fit for a mother who lived a long life. If your mom was younger, you can still read it. Just introduce it as a daughter’s poem to her mother.

Poems for a mom who looked after everyone

Some mothers fed the whole street, drove every carpool and visited every neighbor in the hospital. These readings are about that kind of care.

Seven short lines, first printed in 1890, four years after Dickinson died. It suits a nurse, a teacher, a caregiver or a mom who always had room for one more at the table. It’s also short enough for a memorial card.

Proverbs 31 is the passage most often read for a mother at a church funeral. The verses above are the opening and the description of her character. The closing verses, “Her children arise up, and call her blessed,” are on our funeral poems page. If your mother was a widow or never married, you can read verses 25 to 27 on their own.

A single verse that pictures shelter under a bird’s wings. It suits a mother who protected her family, and it fits easily on a prayer card.

Poems for a mom who loved her garden

If your mom spent her evenings deadheading roses or kept a windowsill of seedlings every spring, a poem about flowers can say something about her that the eulogy might miss.

This is the 1815 version, the one most people know. Wordsworth first printed the poem in 1807 with three stanzas and added the second one later. The last stanza, about flowers coming back to mind on a quiet day, is how a lot of families feel about the person they’ve lost. On a program, it can stand alone.

A poem for a mom who had it hard

Hughes first published “Mother to Son” in The Crisis in December 1922, and the text here is from his 1926 book The Weary Blues. A mother speaks to her son about a life of hard work and keeping on. It suits a mom who raised children alone, worked two jobs or came through years nobody else saw. Read it in your own voice and at an easy pace. You don’t need to perform the dialect.

A poem for the days after

Dickinson describes the housework of grief: the tidying and sorting the family does after someone dies. For many families it describes that first week exactly. It offers little comfort, so read it early in the service and follow it with something warmer.

Newer poems for a mother

These poems are still under copyright, so they aren’t printed here. Reading one aloud at a private service is generally fine. Check with the publisher before you print the whole text.

How to choose a poem for your mom and read it aloud

Choosing one

Start with what your mom was like on an ordinary Tuesday. Did she quote scripture, sing in the car, or leave notes in your lunch bag? Did she like things plain and practical, or did she keep a book of poems by her bed? A poem that sounds like her will mean more to the room than a grand one.

Some ways to narrow it down:

• If the eulogy will cover her life story, pick a poem that does one small thing well, like “Her recipe cards” or Dickinson’s seven lines.
• If she was the one everybody leaned on, Proverbs 31 or “If I can stop one heart from breaking” says that without a long list of her good works.
• If the family is struggling with how she died, a reading about the love that stays, like Rossetti’s sonnet, can steady the room.
• If several of her children want to take part, split the readings. One reads scripture, another reads a poem, and a grandchild reads a short verse.

Check where the poem will go. For the back of a program, under 16 lines fits at a size older guests can read; try it in your funeral program template before you print. For a card, see short verses for memorial cards.

What to say before you read

One sentence before the poem tells people why you chose it. Keep it plain. Some examples you can adapt:

• “Mom had this poem on the fridge for as long as I can remember.”
• “She read us this one every spring when the daffodils came up.”
• “Mom wasn’t one for poems, so I picked something short. This one sounds like her.”
• “My mother’s own mother taught her this verse, and she taught it to us.”

Reading it aloud

Reading for your mother tends to bring up feelings people don’t expect. Prepare as if you will be more emotional than you think.

• Print it large. Use 16 to 18 point type on one sheet, with a blank line between stanzas.
• Practice it out loud at least three times, once in front of someone. The first full read is usually the hardest, so get it over with at home.
• Look up at the end, not during. Keep your eyes on the page while you read. When you finish, pause, look up, and sit down.
• If you can’t go on, stop and breathe. Nobody minds the silence. You can also ask a sibling or friend to stand beside you and finish it.

If you are giving the eulogy too, a short poem makes a good ending. See eulogy for mom for examples, and obituary examples for a mother if you are writing her obituary.

Funeral poems for dad →

Funeral poems for grandma →

For more readings by tone, see the full list of funeral poems.