Eulogy samples

There was a blizzard. Four hours of it. And Mum drove through every bit of it to watch me in a school play. When I asked her afterward if it had been awful, she said she barely noticed the drive. She meant it. That was the thing about her — she didn't experience showing up for us as a sacrifice. It just didn't register that way. That's who Margaret was. She had a garden she treated like a second family. She fed people the way some people breathe — constantly, and without thinking twice. Sunday afternoons belonged to cricket and to her husband, the two of them on the sofa, and if you interrupted during a tense over you did so at your own risk. She wasn't soft-edged about everything. She was stubborn in the way that only people who've thought something through properly can be. She didn't dig her heels in for no reason. She dug them in because she'd already done the working out, and she knew. But underneath that — always underneath it — was this warmth that she just couldn't switch off. The garden fed the neighbours. The kitchen was never closed. She remembered what you liked to eat years after you'd mentioned it once. She leaves behind my dad, her partner of 42 years, and the three of us. We know what we had. We knew it while we had it, which I think is the best you can ask for. She had a line she came back to, whenever something felt too big or too frightening or too hard: Well, you only get one go at it. She wasn't being reckless. She was being clear. Life is short and it's real and it asks something of you. She answered that ask every single day. We'll miss her every day. And we'll try to show up the way she did.

Sunday morning. An empty car park. Just the two of us. Dad had decided it was time I learned to drive. I stalled the car six times. Six. And he never raised his voice once. Not once. He'd just wait for things to go quiet, then say something steady, and we'd start again. That was him. That was exactly him. I don't think he thought of that morning as anything special. For Dad, showing up and staying calm was just what you did. It wasn't a lesson in driving, really. It was a lesson in how to be with people when things aren't going well. Stay. Be patient. Don't make it worse than it already is. He was like that with all of us. Quiet in the way that some people mistake for absent — but he was never absent. He was at every game. Every single one. Rain, cold, the kind of Sunday afternoons that have no business existing — he was on the touchline. You didn't always see him arriving. But you'd look up, and he'd be there. He loved being outside. He loved sport. And most of all, he loved his kids. Everything else kind of arranged itself around those three things. He leaves behind three children who knew, without ever having to be told, that he was proud of them. And two grandchildren who are going to grow up hearing about him — about the car park, about the touchline, about the man who didn't need to be loud to make himself felt. There's no neat way to end something like this. He wouldn't want me to try. So I'll just say: he showed up. Every time. That's what I'll carry. That's what I hope we all carry. We were so lucky he was ours.