Short eulogy examples

Hi. I’m Ezra. Theo Marchetti and I played in a band together for eleven years, which is longer than most marriages and about as much work.

We met at a house party in Richmond when we were twenty-three. He was out on the back porch playing a bass with no amp, just the strings. He looked up and said, “Do you drum? You look like you drum.” I did not drum. I learned, because he asked.

For eleven years we played bars that held forty people and usually had nine. Theo loaded the van every time, because he said the bass player should carry the heavy stuff, it builds character. Before every show he wrote a set list on a paper plate, and then he ignored it. He learned the name of every bartender, every sound guy and every one of those nine people. Some of the nine are here today.

During the day he worked at a bike shop, and he fixed half this city’s bikes for the price of a six-pack.

Theo was thirty-four. I don’t have a way to make that make sense, so I’m not going to try.

What he taught me is to say yes before you’re ready. I said yes to drums, and to touring, and to that terrible apartment on Floyd Avenue. I said yes to asking out my wife, because Theo stood next to me at the bar and said, “Go. I’ll hold your drink.” He held my drink.

Theo, we’re playing your songs on Friday. I wrote the set list on a paper plate. We’re going to ignore it.

Good morning. I’m Desmond Pettiford. I clerked in Courtroom 4B at the parish courthouse for twelve years, and for all twelve, Connie Abara sat about six feet to my left with her hands on the steno machine.

Connie was a court reporter for twenty-eight years. She took down every word said in that room at more than two hundred words a minute, and she never once looked like she was hurrying. When a lawyer asked her to read testimony back, she did it in a flat, even voice, exactly the way it was said. You could watch the lawyer hear what he’d actually said. More than one of them sat down without another word.

She kept a jar of peppermints on the corner of her desk. Officially they were for her. Unofficially, she’d slide one across to a witness who was crying, or a juror who looked like they might faint. My first week, she slid one to me, right after I handed the judge the wrong file in front of a full courtroom. She didn’t say anything. She slid the peppermint over and kept typing.

For twenty years, Connie trained every new clerk in that building, whether anyone asked her to or not. She’d tell you where the judge liked his water glass and which bailiff to go to for help. When you made a mistake, she told you the truth about it, in a voice only you could hear.

What she taught me is that you can be kind in a room that isn’t built for it. People have some of the worst days of their lives in a courtroom. Connie made it a little easier on them, one peppermint at a time.

Connie, I brought the jar. It’s on my desk now, and I’ll keep it full.

Hi. I’m Annelies. I’m fifteen, and Willem de Groot was my opa, which is Dutch for grandpa.

Opa came to Michigan from Friesland when he was twenty, with my oma and one suitcase. He worked at a furniture factory in Grand Rapids for forty years. He could tell you which chairs in your house he helped build, and he’d flip them over to check, at other people’s houses, every time. It was really embarrassing.

He wore wooden shoes in the garden. Real ones. He said they kept his feet dry. Every fall he planted three hundred tulip bulbs, and he made me help, and I complained every single year. In the spring he’d walk me down the rows and tell me every color in Dutch and in English, and I’d pretend I wasn’t listening. I was listening. I still know all of them.

When I was six, he taught me to skate on the lake. He skated backward holding both my hands, and he never let go, even when I fell and took him down with me. He was eighty. He laughed so hard lying on the ice that a lady came over to make sure he was okay.

Opa rode his bike everywhere until he was eighty-eight. It was black and heavy, and it had a bell, and he rang it at everybody he passed. Kids, dogs, the mail carrier, a deer one time. I used to hide when he rode past my school. Now I’d give anything to hear that bell.

Opa, I’ll plant the tulips this fall. I’ll complain about it. And I’m keeping your bike, bell and all.

Good morning. I’m Lionel, Yolanda’s baby brother. I’m fifty-two years old, and I have never paid for a haircut in my life.

Yolanda started cutting my hair on our back porch when she was twelve and I was four. She used Mama’s sewing scissors, and I had a bald spot the size of a quarter for most of first grade. She got better. By the time she opened Yolanda’s on Line Avenue, people were driving in from Texarkana to sit in her chair.

If you wanted to know what was going on in Shreveport, you didn’t buy a paper. You sat in Yolanda’s for an hour. She knew who was getting married and who was getting divorced, and she never told a soul anything they didn’t half know already.

For twenty years, she did something most of you don’t know about. On Monday mornings, when the shop was closed, she cut hair for free for men just out of prison who had a job interview that week. A pastor she knew sent them over. She gave them a cut, a shave and a talking-to, and she told them to come back and tell her how it went. A lot of them did. A couple of them are here this morning, and they look sharp.

When she got sick last year, she still cut my hair every month. The last time, she had to sit down, and her hands shook, and it took her an hour. I didn’t check it in the mirror. I didn’t need to.

What Yolanda taught me is that a fresh start can begin with something small, like a clean haircut and someone asking how it went.

Yoli, I’m going to let my hair grow until somebody gets it right. That could take a while. Love you, sis.

Hi. I’m Kendra. I lived across the hall from Fatemeh Karimi in Building C for seven years.

I moved in with two boys under five, a car that didn’t start and no plan. The first night, someone knocked. It was a tiny woman in a cardigan holding a pot of rice with the crispy crust on top, the part everybody in her family fights over. She handed it to me and said, “You look tired, azizam. Eat.” I didn’t know what azizam meant. It means “my dear.” She called me that for seven years.

Fatemeh came to Reno from Shiraz in 1986. She’d been a chemistry teacher in Iran, and here she worked the front desk at a hotel downtown for thirty years. After her husband died, she said the building was her family now, and she meant it. She knew who worked nights, whose mother was sick and which kid needed a ride to the dentist.

She watched my boys every Tuesday and Thursday for three years so I could finish nursing school. She taught them backgammon, and she never let them win. My oldest is eleven now, and he still hasn’t beaten her. He was supposed to get another chance this week.

I’m a nurse now, and I wouldn’t be without her. I mean that in hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, four to ten, for three years.

What she taught me is that a neighbor can decide to be family. All she did was knock on the door.

Fatemeh, the boys and I are going to keep knocking on doors. I’m still learning the rice. Khoda hafez, azizam.

Hi. I’m Garrett, and Mr. Ruel was my ceramics teacher my junior year of high school. I failed English that year, and he was the one teacher who never seemed worried about me. He put a lump of clay in front of me and said, “Make a bowl that sits flat.” It took me a whole semester. It was a bowl, and it wobbled. He said, “Good. Now do it again.” The second one sat flat. I run a pottery studio on Main Street now, and I teach kids on Saturdays. I keep the first bowl, the wobbly one, on the shelf by the door. Mr. Ruel, thank you for not giving up on me. I’m still doing it again.

Good afternoon. I’m Tess, Lonnie’s niece. Uncle Lonnie drove a snowplow for the city of Sioux Falls for thirty-one winters, and he apologized personally for every mailbox he ever knocked over. When I was sixteen, he taught me to drive stick in an empty church parking lot, in January, in his old pickup. I stalled it forty times. He counted. Every time, he said, “Clutch, gas, breathe,” like he was saying it for the first time. On the forty-first try I got it into second gear, and he cheered like I’d won the lottery. I think about “clutch, gas, breathe” a lot more than he’d believe, and mostly when I’m not driving. Uncle Lonnie, I made it into second. Thank you for counting.

Hi. I’m Yasmin. I played point guard for Coach Pulaski for four years, and I sat on the bench for most of the first two. She never made me feel like I was sitting out. In the middle of a game she’d wave me over and ask, “What do you see?” I’d tell her, and sometimes she used it. Junior year she put me in, and I didn’t come out. Coach ran girls’ basketball here for twenty-two years, and she asked every one of us that same question. I’m a social worker now. I ask the families I work with, “What do you see?” and I wait for the answer, the way she did. Coach, I see a gym full of your girls. We’re all here.