Funny eulogy examples

Good morning. I’m Marisol, Art’s oldest. My dad fixed air conditioners in Tucson for thirty-four years, which made him the most popular man in Pima County every July. He was also the worst joke teller I have ever known, and I’ve known him my whole life.

Every morning there was a new joke on the whiteboard on our fridge. He wrote them at five-thirty, in the dark, before work. Here’s one from my sophomore year. “I used to hate facial hair. Then it grew on me.” That one stayed up for a week, because he said it was a keeper.

He told them to his customers too. A woman would open the door with her AC dead, a hundred and twelve degrees out, and he’d say, “Heard you could use a fan.” Nobody laughed. He’d fix it anyway, and on his way out he’d tell another one.

Last week a woman called my mom to say Art had been out to her house nine times in twenty years. She said she remembered every joke, and not one of them was funny. Then she said she was going to miss them.

When I was twelve, I asked him why he kept telling jokes nobody laughed at. He said, “Mija, the groan is the laugh. You just have to listen for it.”

I think the jokes were for the moment when you’re hot and fed up and somebody shows up at your door acting like it’s all going to be fine. He was that somebody for a lot of people in this town.

In the hospital this spring, the nurses got a joke every shift. His night nurse, Bernadette, told me the last one. “Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field.” She groaned. He said, “There it is.”

The last joke he wrote is still on the fridge. It says, “I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. It’s impossible to put down.” Mom won’t erase it, and neither will I. Dad, it’s a keeper.

Good afternoon. I’m Kirsten, and Ingrid Solberg was my grandmother. If she were here, she’d already have told me this skirt is too thin for October and to stand up straight. She’d be right on both counts.

Grandma had an opinion about everything, and she never kept one in storage. She had views on the Vikings’ offensive line and on how you load a dishwasher, which is her way, and which I still do. Over forty years she wrote sixty-three letters to the editor of the Duluth paper. They printed fifty-one. She kept the other twelve in a folder labeled “Their loss.”

Every Sunday after church she gave Pastor Lindqvist a review on the front steps. He told me this week that in twenty-two years she never once said a sermon was too short. She also never missed a Sunday. When he had his knee replaced, she was the first one at his door, with a pan of bars and a typed list of suggestions for his recovery.

That’s how it went with Grandma. The opinions came with the bars.

When my mom went back to school at thirty-eight, Grandma said it was a terrible idea and the schedule would never work. Then she picked me up from school every afternoon for three years so it would.

When I was nineteen, I told her I was leaving college to work on a fishing boat in Alaska. She said it was the dumbest thing she had ever heard. Then she knit me a hat for it, double-thick wool, in orange, so the Coast Guard could find me. I wore that hat for six seasons. When I went back and finished my degree, she said she’d always known I would, which is not what she said at the time.

What she taught me is that you can disagree with someone completely and still show up with the hat.

Grandma, this service runs under an hour. I timed it. And I’m wearing a slip.

Hi. I’m Owen. Ravi and I met freshman year in a chemistry lab he showed up to forty minutes late, carrying a coffee for the TA by way of apology. It worked. It worked on everybody, for twenty-six years.

Ravi was late to everything. His mom told me he was born eleven days past his due date, and he never made up the time. We called it Ravi time. Every group text had two start times in it. “Dinner is at seven. Ravi, dinner is at six.” He knew about this. He still showed up at seven-thirty.

At graduation he missed his name being called and walked across the stage after the Z’s, to the biggest applause of the day. He was twenty minutes late to his first date with Anjali. She married him anyway, and she has asked me to tell you she’s still waiting on an explanation.

There was one exception to Ravi time. When something was actually wrong, he was early. When my dad had his heart attack, Ravi beat me to the hospital, and I live closer. When I lost my job, he was on my porch with a pizza before I’d finished telling my wife. I never figured out how he heard so fast.

Ravi was late to every party and early to every emergency, and I’ve come to think he had it the right way around.

He was forty-four. I can’t make sense of that, and I’m not going to try up here. For once he got somewhere before the rest of us, and he would hate that.

Ravi, we told everyone this service started at ten. On your invitation, we put nine. Take your time.

Good morning. I’m Paula, Gus’s niece. Uncle Gus fished out of New Bedford for thirty years, mostly on the scallop boats, and when he retired he decided to become a businessman. It didn’t go the way he planned.

The first year it was worms. He raised nightcrawlers in bins in the basement and sold them from a cooler at the end of the driveway. Aunt Dulce allowed it for one summer. Then one night the worms got out, and we don’t talk about that night.

Next came the kettle corn. He bought a kettle about the size of a hot tub and set up at every street fair between here and Fall River. He gave away about as much as he sold, mostly to kids who stood and looked at it too long.

Then the limousine. A white 1987 Lincoln with a bar in the back that never had a single bottle in it, because Uncle Gus didn’t drink. He drove half this family to their proms and their weddings in that car, and he never charged one of us. So it was a limousine service with no paying customers. He was very proud of it.

I used to think Uncle Gus was bad at business. I’ve changed my mind. The worms had him talking to every fisherman on the waterfront. The limo put him at every big day this family has had for twenty years.

When my dad got sick, Uncle Gus drove him to chemo in the Lincoln every Tuesday for five months. He wore the chauffeur’s hat. He said the back seat was better for napping. My dad told me those drives were the only part of the week he looked forward to.

Uncle Gus, the Lincoln is parked out front, and my cousin Paulo is driving it to the cemetery. Aunt Dulce says the kettle is for sale, if anyone’s interested. The worms are not.

Good morning. I’m Sean Whitlock. I worked with Gloria Navarro at Valley Parts Supply in Fresno for fourteen years. Her title was office manager, which doesn’t begin to cover it. The owner signed the checks, and Gloria told him which ones.

Gloria owned a label maker, and she used it the way other people use a pen. The coffee maker had a label that said “Coffee maker.” The fridge had one that said “Food left past Friday becomes Gloria’s property.” It was not an idle threat. My second year, I left a lasagna in there over a long weekend, and on Tuesday there was a label on my desk that said “Thank you for the lasagna.”

The supply closet was locked, and Gloria had the only key. If you needed a pen, you asked Gloria, and she asked what happened to your last pen. We complained about that closet for fourteen years. Then last winter she was out for six weeks after her surgery, and we found out what happens to an unlocked supply closet. By week three there wasn’t a pen left in the building. Somebody took the stapler home.

Gloria kept a spreadsheet of every birthday at the company, all sixty-two of us, including drivers she saw twice a year. Every one of us got a cake and a card signed by the whole building. When my son was born early, she organized dinners for my wife and me for a month, and she labeled every container. “Monday. Chicken. Reheat 3 min.” I kept one of those labels. It’s on my lunchbox.

What Gloria taught me is that most of looking after people is noticing small things and writing them down.

Gloria, the closet is locked again. I have the key now. And I’m going to ask everybody what happened to their last pen.