Eulogy for an Estranged Parent You Barely Spoke To

A eulogy for an estranged parent does not have to claim the relationship was close. Say what was true, keep it short, speak about who they were to other people as well as to you, and stop before you try to explain the whole history. Three hundred words is enough.

You are probably reading this because someone died that you had not spoken to in years, and now there is a funeral on Saturday and your name is on the order of service.

Nobody has given you a script for this. Every example you can find is written for people who loved their parent plainly and miss them simply. That is not your situation, and the speeches written for it will not come out of your mouth.

Below are four complete eulogies for four different kinds of estrangement, written out in full so you can take whole lines if you need them. After those, the opening lines, the closing lines, and the decisions that come before any of it.

Four complete eulogies for an estranged parent

Each one stands on its own. Read them out loud. The one that sounds closest to your situation is the one to start from, and you should change every name, detail and date in it.

1. For a father you reconciled with near the end

My father and I did not speak for eleven years. I want to say that at the start, because most of you knew about it already, and because he would have hated a speech that tidied it up.

We stopped speaking after my mother's funeral. The reasons were real at the time, and they mattered to me for a long while. I am not going to list them here. What I will say is that eleven years is a long time to be right about something.

He called me in March. He had the test results and he wanted to tell me himself. We talked for nineteen minutes. I know that because I looked at the phone afterwards. Most of it was about his car.

After that we talked most Sundays. Never about the eleven years. We did not get to that, and I have made my peace with not getting to it. We talked about the car, and the garden, and whether I was eating properly. He asked about my daughter every single time, and he remembered what I had told him the week before.

In June I drove down and we sat out the back. He showed me the tomatoes. He was proud of them in a way that was almost funny. He said, I have got better at this since you were small. I said, you have got better at a lot of things. He looked at the tomatoes and said, some of them.

That is most of what I have. Eight months at the end of a life, after eleven years of nothing.

But I have spent this week talking to people who had him for all of it. Dennis, who worked beside him for twenty-two years and says he never took a sick day he did not need. The men at the allotment, who kept using the same word to me, steady. My aunt, who told me he kept every school photograph I ever sent, in a drawer, in order, with the years written on the back in pencil.

So there is a version of my father I did not get, and most of you did. And there is a version you did not get, which is a man on the telephone on a Sunday morning asking after a five year old he had never met, and then listening to the whole answer.

I do not know how to add those two up. I have decided I do not have to do it today.

Dad, we got eight months. I would have liked more than that. I am glad it was not none.

2. For a mother you never reconciled with

I am Ruth. I am Margaret's daughter. Some of you will not have known she had one, and that is not an accident of your memory. We had not spoken in nine years.

I thought for a long time about whether to stand up here at all. In the end I decided that someone from the family should say her name out loud in a room full of people who cared about her, and that it should be me.

I am not going to tell you we were close. I am also not going to use the time I have been given to list what went wrong. She has people here who loved her, and you have lost something real this week. What I lost, I lost a long time ago, and today is not about that.

So let me tell you the things I know to be true about her.

She was clever. She read two books a week and she finished the ones she hated out of principle. She could do long division in her head faster than I could find a pen.

She was excellent in a crisis and difficult on an ordinary Tuesday. When my cousin's house flooded in 1998, she was there with a van and three men and a plan before the water had gone down. Nobody had asked her to come.

She kept her word to people outside the family absolutely. Pat told me yesterday that my mother drove her to hospital appointments every third Thursday for four years and never mentioned it to a single soul. I believe that completely. It sounds exactly like her.

She made the best lemon cake I have ever eaten and she would not give the recipe to anybody, including me, including when I was eleven and asked nicely.

None of those are small things. A person can be all of that and still not manage the one relationship you needed them to manage. Both are true at once. I stopped trying to make one of them cancel out the other some years ago, and I would recommend it.

To those of you who got the better part of her: I am glad you did. I mean that. I hope you will talk about her today, the real her, the lemon cake and the van and the long division, because all of it deserves saying out loud.

Mum, I hope you found some peace at the end. I did not get to ask.

Thank you all for coming.

3. The very short one, for a small graveside

Thank you all for coming out this morning.

My father was called Ray. He was born in Stoke, he worked with his hands his whole life, and he died on Tuesday at seventy-eight in a hospital bed with the radio on.

He and I were not in touch for the last twelve years. I am not going to go into why. That was ours, and it stays ours.

He was a good electrician. He was funny in a dry way that took people a minute to catch. He liked a long drive with no particular destination, and he knew every back road between here and the coast.

That is what I have. It is honest. I would rather say five true sentences about him than twenty I do not mean.

Rest well, Dad.

4. For a parent who left when you were a child

My name is Daniel. Frank was my father. I met him four times that I can remember and once that I cannot, so almost everything I am about to say, other people told me.

He left when I was two. My mother raised my sister and me on her own and she did it well, and I want that said out loud in this room, because it is the fact underneath all the others.

I had not planned to speak today. His neighbour Angela rang me on Thursday and said there would be nobody from the family here, and I found that I could not let that stand. So here I am. I am going to tell you what I have been told, because somebody should, and I am the one who turned up.

He was a sign painter. He did the lettering on the old hardware shop on Mill Street, the gold on black, and apparently he went back twice in the eighties to touch it up for nothing because it had started to bother him. I went and looked at it yesterday morning. It is still sharp.

He had a dog called Ruby for fourteen years and he walked her at five in the morning because he liked the town empty.

He could fix a lawnmower, I am told, and would not take money for it.

Angela says he asked after me. Not often, and never enough to pick up a telephone, but he knew where I worked and he knew I had children. You can make of that what you like. I am still deciding what I make of it.

There is a version of this speech where I forgive him out loud so that everyone here can go home feeling better, and a version where I use my four minutes to say what it cost. I am not doing either one. I was two years old. I do not have the memories to be that angry and I do not have the memories to be that generous.

What I have is this. A man who painted good signs, walked a dog in the dark, fixed things for his neighbours, and died without most of the people who should have been standing around him.

So let me do the one small thing I can do from up here. Frank Doyle. Sign painter. Born 1951. Walked Ruby every morning for fourteen years. Painted the gold lettering on Mill Street and went back twice to fix it because it was not right.

Somebody said his name out loud. That is what I came for.

What to say when an estranged parent dies

Say three things: who they were to other people, two or three concrete facts you can stand behind, and one honest sentence about the distance. A eulogy for an estranged parent is a short, factual tribute that states what was true about the person without claiming a closeness that did not exist.

The decision that matters most is whether to name the estrangement at all. There is no right answer, but there is a rule that holds: name it in the first thirty seconds or do not name it anywhere. An estrangement that surfaces halfway through a warm speech reads as a confession. An estrangement stated at the top is just context, and the room settles immediately.

Name it if the people in the room already know, if your absence over the years would otherwise be the loudest thing about you standing up, or if pretending would make you stop halfway. Leave it out if the audience is mostly strangers, if there is a surviving parent or partner who would be hurt by it, or if you simply do not want to. You are not under oath.

Openings that work when the relationship was broken, said plainly:

• "My father and I had not spoken in nine years. I am telling you that first so the rest of this makes sense."
• "I am Ruth. I am Margaret's daughter. Some of you did not know she had one."
• "I knew my mother best through other people, and I have spent this week talking to them."
• "We were not close. He was still my dad, and someone from the family should say his name today."
• "I am not going to stand here and tell you we were close, because half of you were at the Christmas we stopped speaking."
• "There is a lot I could say about my father and I am going to say a small amount of it."

What to leave out is simpler. Leave out the list of grievances, the single defining incident, anything that would make a person in the third row feel accused, and any sentence that begins "despite everything". Leave out the word "but" as a hinge, as in "he was difficult, but he loved us". The "but" tells the room you are arguing with yourself. Put a full stop in instead: "He was difficult. He loved us in the way he had." If the person was genuinely hard work rather than merely distant, there is more on handling that in writing a eulogy for a difficult person honestly.

If you have almost no material of your own, borrow other people's. Three phone calls on Thursday night to a neighbour, a workmate and a cousin will give you more usable detail than four hours of trying to remember. The same method, worked through step by step, is in how to write a eulogy for someone you didn't know well.

How to end a eulogy for an estranged parent

End by speaking to them directly in one short line, then stop. Do not end on forgiveness you have not arrived at, and do not end on a summary of the relationship, because there is no summary and the room can feel you reaching for one.

Endings that hold up, in order from warmest to coolest:

• "Dad, we got eight months. I would have liked more. I am glad it was not none."
• "I hope you found some peace at the end. I did not get to ask."
• "Thank you for the parts you could manage."
• "I am glad the people in this room got what they got from you."
• "Rest well, Mum."
• "Somebody said his name out loud. That is what I came for."

Four of those are six words or fewer. That is deliberate. A short last line is almost impossible to fumble, and this is the point in the speech where voices go.

How long it should be, and what to do if your voice goes

Two to four minutes, which is 300 to 600 words. Shorter than a standard eulogy, and nobody will think less of you for it. A short, true speech about a complicated parent lands better than a long one, and the length itself tells the room something honest without you having to say it. If you want more examples at that length, these short eulogies run under three minutes, and the one above at the graveside is 130 words and does the whole job.

Print it in 16 point, double spaced, on one side of paper only, and do not staple it. Mark one line near the start where you will stop and breathe. If your voice goes, stop and look at the page. The room will wait, and the silence feels about four times longer to you than to anyone else. If you cannot restart, say "I will leave it there" and sit down. That is a complete and dignified ending and several people will tell you afterwards it was the best part.

Have one other person holding a copy. A cousin, a friend, anyone. Tell them beforehand that if you stop and shake your head, they come up and read the rest. Knowing someone can take over is usually what stops you needing it. If you would rather not write the first version from a blank page at all, this eulogy writer asks you a few quiet questions and gives you a draft to argue with instead, and the preview is free.

Common questions

What happens when an estranged parent dies?

Practically, the next of kin is contacted even after years of no contact, which is how many people find out. You may be asked about the funeral, the death certificate and the estate whether or not you were close. Emotionally, most people report something flatter and more confusing than grief, and that reaction is ordinary. You are allowed to attend, to speak, or to do neither.

Is it appropriate to attend the funeral of an estranged parent?

Yes. Attending is not a statement that the relationship was repaired, and nobody present will read it that way. Go if you want the ending, or if not going is something you think you would carry. Stay at the back, leave after the service rather than going to the wake, and ask one person to stay beside you. You are not obliged to speak just because you came.

What to say to an estranged family member who is also grieving?

Keep it to one sentence and make no demands of them. "I am sorry. I know this is complicated for you too" is enough, and it does not reopen anything. Avoid using the funeral to repair a separate estrangement, because grief makes people agree to things they later resent. If a longer conversation is wanted, it will still be wanted next month.

What is the best opening line for a eulogy?

The best opening line states who you are and your relationship to the person, in that order, in under ten words. "I am Ruth. I am Margaret's daughter." When the relationship was estranged, add the distance in the same breath rather than saving it: "We had not spoken in nine years." Avoid opening with a quotation, a dictionary definition, or thanking everyone for coming.

What are some examples of great eulogies for a father?

The ones that work are specific rather than warm. They name a job, a habit, a phrase he used, a year, a place, and they do not try to cover a whole life. The four speeches above are written for estranged fathers and mothers specifically. For a straightforward relationship, our five examples for five kinds of dad are a better starting point.

Whatever you end up saying on the day will be shorter than you planned and that is normal. Take one of the speeches above, cut it to the parts you can say without arguing with yourself, and read it slowly.

You do not owe anybody a version of your parent that never existed. You only have to stand up, say some true things, and sit down.