A eulogy example, in full

“Put the kettle on, then we’ll see.”

If you ever took a problem to my mum, that’s what you got. Not advice. Not a fuss. The kettle. And somehow, by the bottom of the cup, it was usually a smaller problem.

Open with them, not the occasion. Her own words put her in the room before anyone has been thanked for coming.

Thank you all for coming today.

Dorothy Whitworth, Dot to everyone, was born in Oldham in 1942. In 1965 she married my dad, Ken, and moved to Marple, and that was that. She never left. They had fifty-four years together before Dad died in 2019. They had two children, me and Mark, and three grandchildren, Ellie, Tom and Grace. And she had Jean, next door, her best friend.

The life, lightly. The facts people expect, and the names the family wanted said, in six sentences.

For twenty-four years Mum worked at St Paul’s Primary. She started as a dinner lady and finished as the school secretary.

There’s a story from those years that gets told in our family every Christmas. The Year Six trip to Blackpool. The children are ready, and the coach driver doesn’t turn up. Now, Mum had never driven anything bigger than a Fiesta. She drove the minibus. All the way to Blackpool. And by all accounts she sang the whole way there.

That was Mum. If a thing needed doing, she didn’t hold a meeting about it.

The laugh comes early. It lets the room breathe out, and it earns the quieter story that follows.

But there’s another story. In the school office she kept a biscuit tin, and there were no biscuits in it. It was full of gloves. Spare gloves, for the children who came in on cold mornings without any. She never told anyone.

Show, don’t describe. Nobody has said “kind” yet. Nobody needs to.

If you asked anyone here for a word about Mum, I know the first one you’d get. Stubborn. She did the crossword in pen. And when she was wrong, she was wrong in pen. I think that might also be what people mean when they say she was funny without meaning to be.

The second word would be generous. Nobody left that house without a carrier bag of runner beans. You could have called round to read the meter and you’d have gone home with beans. The allotment was her place: runner beans and sweet peas. She smelled of sweet peas, and Nivea.

And she never missed Corrie. Not once. I feel that ought to be on the record.

The last two years were harder. Dementia took some of Mum from us. But it was two years out of a long life, and it’s not what I’ll remember. I’ll remember the woman with the minibus keys.

Handled gently, as asked. The daughter’s instruction was “mention it briefly, don’t dwell”. Two honest sentences, then Dot comes back as herself.

Every Sunday, at six o’clock, I rang my mum. Six o’clock on a Sunday is going to be a very quiet time for a while.

She taught me that you turn up. You don’t have to know what to say. You turn up, you put the kettle on, and then you’ll see.

So, Mum. Thank you. For the gloves, and the beans, and the minibus, and the Sundays. We’ll turn up.

I’ll put the kettle on.

End where you began. The last line is five words, short enough to say when your voice is going.

When I was nine I left my bike out, and the bin lorry ran over it.

I thought Dad would go mad. He just looked at it for a while. Then he said, “It’ll mend,” and he carried it down to the shed. Three nights later it was back. Straighter than when it was new. And green. It had been red. Green was the paint he had.

Open with a story, if you have one. No welcome, no dates. One story from when the son was nine, in the order it happened. The laugh at the end is a fact.

My dad said “It’ll mend” about everything. The washing machine. A bad school report. He’d look at the thing for a while, and then he’d say it. And it usually did mend, because he mended it. He never once got a man in.

Anything that wasn’t a machine, he’d say, “Ask the boss.” The boss was my mum.

His words, not ours. The eulogy never says “patient”. It doesn’t need to.

Thank you for being here. We lost him suddenly.

What the son asked for. His instruction was “Just say it was sudden.” Four words, said once, beside the thank-you, and nothing more.

Kenneth Whitworth. Ken. He was born in Stockport in 1940, left school at fifteen, and served his apprenticeship as a fitter. He married my mum, Dot, in 1965. Married fifty-four years. They moved to Marple. Two children, my sister Susan and me. Grandchildren: Ellie, Tom and Grace.

The facts, quickly. Name, town, trade, marriage, family, in a few short lines. It isn’t a CV.

For thirty-one years he was a maintenance fitter at the paper mill. The mill shut in 1996. After that he drove the school bus for nine years, and I think he loved that more. He knew every child’s name.

Stockport County. Every home game, rain or shine.

A tape measure and a stub of pencil in his top pocket, always. Extra strong mints. He whistled when he was concentrating, and he never knew he did it. Radio on all day, never the telly. Tea with two sugars, in the same chipped County mug. Big hands. He could still thread a needle for my mum.

He had his shed. He never threw a jam jar away. Screws, nails, washers, all sorted, in jam jars on the shed shelf. He could tell you what was wrong with a car from the sound of it going past the house.

Things, not adjectives. A tape measure, a mug, jam jars. Each one is him.

I’ll miss Saturdays. Going to County with him, and not needing to talk.

You don’t throw a thing away because it’s broken. He taught me that.

Dad.

You said it about everything.

It’ll mend.

The son asked to end there. His instruction was “End on it’ll mend.” It is his dad’s saying, not a promise about grief, and it is two words long.