Eulogy for a Best Friend: Five Speeches Written Out in Full

A eulogy for a best friend usually runs 3 to 5 minutes, about 500 to 750 words, and works best when it is built around two or three specific stories instead of a list of good qualities. Below are five complete examples you can adapt: a steady one, a funny one, a two minute one, one for a sudden death, and one for a friendship that had drifted.

You have been asked to speak because you knew them in a way their family did not. That is the whole job. You are not there to summarise a life from birth to death. You are there to give the room the person who was in your phone.

Five complete eulogies follow. Each one is written to be read out loud exactly as it stands. Change the names, swap in your own two or three stories, and cut anything that is not true about your friend. They are deliberately different from each other, because best friends are not one type of person. One is plain and steady. One is funny, properly funny, because some people would haunt you for a solemn send off. One is two minutes long, for when you are not sure you can hold it together. One is for a death that came with no warning. One is for a friendship that had already faded before it ended.

Read the one that sounds like your friend. Ignore the rest.

Five eulogy examples for a best friend

1. For a friend you had for thirty years

Plain and steady. Written for a long friendship built out of ordinary days rather than dramatic ones.

I met Dave in 1994. We were both nineteen, both working nights at the packing plant, and both very bad at it.

He is the reason I have a wife, a job and a bad back. He introduced me to Julie. He put my name forward at work in 2003. And in 2011 he talked me into helping him move a piano, which is a story his sons have heard more times than they wanted to.

That is what thirty years of friendship actually looks like. Not the big moments. The way one person threads through everything.

Dave was not a talker. If you asked him how he was, you got "fine" whether he was fine or not. But he turned up. When my father died, he drove four hours, said almost nothing, and sat in my kitchen until two in the morning. He washed up before he left. I did not ask him to. I did not even notice until the next day.

He was like that with everyone. Half the people in this room have a story like mine, and most of them involve Dave doing something practical and then leaving before anyone could thank him properly.

He loved his garden, he loved his football team, and he loved complaining about his football team. He read every word of the match report even when they lost, which was most weeks. He would tell you the season was over in September and renew his ticket in June.

Sarah, Tom, Michael: he talked about you constantly. Badly, and with no detail, the way men of his generation do. But if you had heard the way he said "my boys" you would never doubt it for a second.

I do not know how to finish this. He would have hated the fuss, so I will stop, which is the only thing he ever asked of anyone.

Thanks, mate. I will see you in the garden.

2. For a friend who would have hated anything solemn

Genuinely funny, and still ends honestly. A funny eulogy only works if the laughs are about your friend rather than about you performing.

Kath left instructions. I want everyone to understand that what follows is her fault and not mine.

Rule one: nobody is allowed to call her an angel. Rule two: if anyone cries too much, and she did not define too much, I am to move straight on to the next bit. Rule three: I was to mention that she beat me at squash in 2009 and never stopped talking about it. So there it is. She beat me at squash in 2009. It was one game. I had food poisoning.

Kath was the funniest person I have known, and she was funny in a particular way. She was never funny at anyone's expense except her own, and occasionally mine, and I gave written permission for that in about 1998.

She once drove ninety minutes to my house to hand me a bag of frozen peas, because I had mentioned on the phone that I had hurt my knee. She did not come in. She gave me the peas, said "you owe me petrol money," and drove home. She never took the petrol money. She brought it up at every birthday for eleven years.

She was a terrible cook and a worse liar. She could not keep a secret unless it belonged to somebody else, and then she took it to the grave, which, and she would want me to point this out, she has now done.

Here is the part she did not write for me.

Kath was the person I called first. Good news, bad news, no news at all. Twenty six years of the phone being answered on the second ring.

I am going to keep calling. She is going to keep not answering. That is the only bit I cannot make funny, so I will stop trying.

Kath, I owe you petrol money.

3. For when you are not sure you can hold it together (two minutes)

Short on purpose. Around 270 words, which is close to two minutes out loud. Short does not mean thin, it means every line has to earn its place.

I am going to keep this short, because I want to get through it.

Marcus was my best friend for twelve years.

He was kind in a way that took effort. He remembered things. He asked follow up questions about the boring parts of your life, the dentist appointment, the argument with the landlord, and then he asked about them again a week later, which is the part most people forget to do.

He was funny and stubborn. He would rather be late than rushed. He had strong opinions about bread.

Three things I want you to know about him.

He gave me a place to stay for six weeks in 2016 and never once made me feel like a guest.

He learned to swim at thirty four because his daughter was frightened of the water and he did not want her to be frightened on her own.

And he thanked everyone. Drivers, waiters, the man who empties the bins. Every single time. I have started doing it because of him, and I notice now how few people bother.

That is who he was. Whatever you remember about him, I promise the version his family got was better.

Priya, Amara: he was proud of you both in a loud, embarrassing, tell everyone at work about it way.

I loved him. I am going to miss him for a long time.

Thank you.

4. For a friend who died suddenly

Written for a death with no warning, where the room is in shock rather than prepared. It says the unsayable thing early and then gets on with the person.

Nine days ago Jonah sent me a photograph of a sandwich. That is the last thing I have from him. A photograph of a sandwich, and the word "behold".

I have read it about four hundred times since.

None of us are ready to be here. There was no warning and no illness. I know some people in this room have been lying awake at three in the morning looking for the thing they missed. There is nothing. I have looked too.

So rather than try to make sense of it, I want to tell you what he was like, while it is still easy for me to hear his voice saying it back.

Jonah was thirty one. He was loud in a way that made rooms better. He was late to everything and apologised so well that you forgave him before he finished the sentence. He had been teaching himself the bass for two years and was still bad at it, cheerfully, with no plan to improve.

He was generous with money he did not have. He drove people to airports at five in the morning. He was always the first to say the awkward true thing in a group, which is a rarer kind of courage than people give it credit for.

He and I had a running argument about whether a hot dog is a sandwich. I am going to say, here, in front of his mother, that he was right. He was not right. But he would have loved hearing me say it.

Jonah, I am not finished talking to you. I do not think I will be for a long time.

5. For a friend you had drifted away from

For the person who was the best friend once, and not recently. This register is missing from almost every example page online, and it is the situation a lot of people are actually in.

Ellie and I were best friends for about fifteen years, and then we were not, and then she died, and I have spent this week trying to work out what to call that.

Here is the honest version. We were inseparable from the age of eleven. We shared a flat in our twenties. Then she moved, and I had children, and the calls got shorter and then rarer, and neither of us did anything dramatic about it. There was no argument. There was a Christmas card, and then there was not even that.

I am not going to stand here and pretend I saw her last month. Plenty of you did. You knew a version of her that I lost track of, and I am glad she had you.

But I knew the first one. I knew her at thirteen, when she wanted to be a vet and had the posters to prove it. I knew her at nineteen, when she cut her own hair the night before a job interview and got the job anyway. I knew what she was like at four in the morning when everything was funny. I knew what she was like when her mum was ill and she stopped answering the door, and I knew to keep knocking.

She was loyal past the point of reason. She once refused to speak to a boy for a year on my behalf, over something I had already forgiven and had actually forgotten about.

If you are sitting here with a gap like mine, I do not think the gap cancels what came before it. That is what I have decided this week. I am going to keep believing it.

Ellie, you were my first proper friend. Nothing that happened afterwards changed that, and I am sorry it took this to make me say it out loud.

What is the best opening line for a eulogy for a friend?

The best opening line names your friend, names your place in their life, and then stops. "I am Rob. Kath and I were friends for twenty six years." You do not need a quote, a poem, or a thank you to the funeral director. Everyone in the room already knows why they are sad. What they do not know is who you are and why you are the one standing up.

Openings that work, all of them usable as written:

• "For those who do not know me, I am Sam. Jonah was my best friend for nine years."
• "I have known Kath since we were eleven. I am going to try to do this without crying and I am probably going to fail."
• "Dave would have hated this. He told me once that funerals should be twenty minutes and then the pub."
• "There are about forty people in this room who could be standing here. I drew the short straw, so you are getting me."
• "I want to tell you about the day I met him, because it explains everything else."
• "Marcus was my best friend. I still cannot say that in the past tense, so I am going to say it once, now, and then get on with it."
• "Ellie and I met in Miss Hartley's class in 1989 and she talked through the entire lesson."
• "I am not family. I am the friend. I think that means I get to tell the stories the family already know but have politely never mentioned."

If the first line is the exact thing you are stuck on, it can help to get any version of the whole speech onto the page and fix the opening afterwards. You can answer a few questions about your friend at the eulogy writer and read the preview before you decide anything. Something to rewrite is easier than a blank screen.

What are the three main points of a eulogy?

Most eulogies do three things: they say who the person was to you, they prove it with one or two specific stories, and they say what the people listening are left with. A eulogy is a short speech at a funeral or memorial that tells the room who someone was, usually through a small number of specific stories rather than a summary of their whole life.

1. Who they were to you. One or two sentences. How you met, how long it lasted, what role they played. This is the frame for everything after it.

2. Two or three stories, told in detail. This is the part people remember. A story with a day, a place and a piece of dialogue beats five adjectives every time. "He was generous" is forgettable. "He drove ninety minutes to hand me a bag of frozen peas and then drove home" is not. If you are choosing between four stories, cut to two and tell them properly.

3. What the room is left with. Not a moral. Just the thing you want people to carry out of the door. Often it is one habit of theirs that other people have started copying, or one sentence spoken directly to your friend.

If you are staring at a blank page and cannot even get to point one, our guide on how to write a eulogy when you don't know where to start walks through getting the first messy version down.

How long should a eulogy for a best friend be?

Three to five minutes, which is 500 to 750 words at a normal speaking pace. Five minutes is the outer edge. Some funeral home guides say ten to fifteen minutes, and that advice is wrong for a friend speaking on a programme alongside family, a celebrant and often a second reading. Nobody has ever left a funeral wishing a speech had been longer.

The maths, so you can check your draft:

• 90 seconds: about 200 words
• 2 minutes: about 270 words
• 3 minutes: about 400 words
• 5 minutes: about 700 words

Grief slows most people down, so read your draft out loud with a timer rather than trusting the word count alone. If it comes in over five minutes, cut a story rather than trimming every sentence. One story told fully always beats three stories told at speed. If you need something much shorter, these short eulogy examples you can read in under three minutes are built for exactly that.

What to leave out when the family is in the front row

Cut anything that makes the family learn something new about their own person at a funeral. That is the single rule, and it covers most of the hard decisions.

Specifically, leave out:

• The wild years, unless the family already tell those stories themselves. The drinking story that is hilarious in a pub can land very differently in front of a mother.
• Exes and relationship history. Name the partner who is in the room. Do not narrate the ones who are not.
• Money, work grievances and family friction. None of it belongs in a eulogy.
• Clinical detail about the illness or the death. The people listening were there for it and do not need it repeated.
• In-jokes that need a five minute set up. If it takes that long, it is for you and not for the room.
• Anything where you end up being the hero of the story. Easy to do by accident. Read your draft back and count how often you are the subject of the sentence.

Two things worth doing. Send the family a message the day before saying which two stories you plan to tell. It takes one minute and removes the only real risk. And say the family's names out loud during the speech, especially children. A friend who names the kids from the lectern gives them something they will remember for thirty years. If a relative is also speaking, a quick check between you avoids telling the same story twice. Our examples of a eulogy for a grandmother show the family side of the same funeral if you want to see how the two speeches can sit next to each other.

What to do if you start crying

Stop, breathe out slowly, and wait. The room is not uncomfortable, and nobody is checking their watch. A pause that feels like a minute to you is about four seconds to everyone else.

Practical things that help, decided in advance rather than at the lectern:

• Print it in 14 point with double spacing, and number the pages. Phones dim, hands shake, and a folded sheet is hard to find your place on.
• Put a water glass on the lectern before the service starts.
• Mark two or three places in the margin where you will deliberately pause, usually just before the hardest sentence.
• Look at the back wall rather than at faces during the hardest paragraph. Looking at your friend's mother will finish you.
• Ask one person in advance to be ready to finish reading it if you cannot. Tell them where the copy is. Knowing there is a safety net is often the reason you will not need it.

Crying while you speak is not a failure at the job. Getting the words out at all is the job.

Questions people ask about a eulogy for a best friend

What is an example of a beautiful eulogy for a friend?

The five above are complete examples you can read out as they stand. The common feature of a good one is not beautiful language, it is specific detail. Frozen peas, a piano, a bag packed at five in the morning. Detail is what makes a room recognise the person. If you want a starting draft built from your own details, the eulogy writer asks a few quiet questions and shows you a free preview before anything is paid.

What are some good quotes to use in a eulogy for a best friend?

The best quote in a eulogy for a friend is almost always something your friend actually said. A phrase they overused, the thing they always answered the phone with, the advice they gave you at twenty two. That will land harder than any poet. If you do want a published line, keep it to one sentence, put it near the end, and make sure it sounds like something your friend would not roll their eyes at. Do not read a whole poem in place of your own words.

What is a beautiful quote for a friend who died?

Short and plain beats grand. Lines that work at a funeral tend to be simple statements rather than elaborate images, and they work best when you say why you chose it: "she had this on a fridge magnet for fifteen years." A quote with a reason attached is a story. A quote on its own is decoration.

What should I write in a message to my best friend who has passed away?

Write it as if you are still speaking to them, in the second person, and do not edit it for an audience. Many people post something publicly and keep a longer private version. Three things to include: one thing you never said out loud, one thing you are going to keep doing because of them, and one thing you are struggling with now. That private version is often where the best lines of the eulogy come from, so write it first if you can.

Can a friend give a eulogy instead of a family member?

Yes, and it is common. Families often ask a friend precisely because they cannot get through it themselves, and because a friend holds the years the family did not see. Keep to the length the family or celebrant asked for, tell them in advance what you plan to say, and let the family have the final word on the order of service.

What should you not say in a eulogy for a friend?

Avoid anything that speaks for the family's grief rather than your own, any story the family has not heard before, and phrases like "she would not want us to be sad." People are allowed to be sad. Also avoid making promises on behalf of the room, such as telling everyone how they will remember your friend. Say what you will remember and let everyone else keep their own version.

One last thing

You are not being asked to sum up a person. Nobody can do that, and the room is not expecting it. You are being asked to stand up for four minutes and tell them what your friend was like, which you happen to know better than almost anyone alive.

Pick two stories. Tell them properly. Say their name at the end. If you want a first draft to argue with rather than a blank page, you can see a preview here before deciding anything.