Second Marriage Eulogy: Who Speaks and What They Say

When someone was remarried, the second spouse and the children from the first marriage usually speak separately, not instead of each other. The widow or widower speaks about the marriage. An adult child speaks about the parent. A celebrant can read a third tribute for anyone who cannot stand up. No rule says one person has to represent everybody.

Your father died on Tuesday. He married your mother in 1978 and they divorced in 1994. He married Diane in 1999, and she was with him for the last twenty six years, including the eleven months in and out of hospital. The funeral is Saturday. The funeral director asked who would be giving the eulogy, and nobody in the room answered.

That silence is not really about grief. Everyone in it knows that whoever speaks will be heard as the person who gets to say what his life added up to. The second wife does not want to speak over his children. The children do not want to hear their mother written out of his life. Nobody wants to be the one who starts an argument four days before a funeral.

There is a way through that does not require anyone to win. Below is the decision, the exact words for the conversations it takes, and five complete tributes, including a pair written to be read back to back.

Who speaks at the funeral of someone who was remarried?

Both sides speak, one after the other, and each person speaks only for themselves. The second spouse takes three minutes on the marriage. One adult child takes three minutes on the parent. Two short tributes are easier to write than one long one, they are easier to get through without breaking down, and they remove the question nobody can answer, which is who owns the account of his life.

No custom, no law and no faith tradition hands the eulogy to the surviving spouse. The person married to him at the time of death is usually asked first, because the funeral director and the celebrant deal with the next of kin, but being asked first is not the same as being the only speaker. A eulogy is one person's account of someone's life, read aloud at the funeral, and in a blended family it works better as two short accounts than one official one. For the general version of this decision, outside a second marriage, see who gives the eulogy at a funeral.

Four questions settle it faster than a family discussion will.

1. Who was there for the last year? That person holds the illness, the hospital, the last conversations. Those details belong in a tribute and usually only one person has them.
2. Who has the longest view? That is almost always a child from the first marriage. The childhood, the forty year old jokes, the version of him that existed before any of this.
3. Who can get through three minutes out loud? Ask it plainly. Grief is not evenly distributed and neither is the ability to stand up in front of two hundred people.
4. How long is the slot? A crematorium service is often twenty minutes in total. Two tributes of three minutes each fit. One tribute of twelve minutes does not.

If the answers point at two different people, that is not a problem to solve. That is the arrangement: two speakers, three minutes each, second spouse first or last, agreed in advance.

The five conversations, written out word for word

These are the sentences that get stuck. Read them, change the names, say them on the phone. None of them require anybody to admit anything about the divorce.

If you are the second spouse and you have been handed the eulogy:

"The funeral director asked me about the eulogy and I said I would speak for a few minutes about our marriage. I would rather not be the only one. You knew him for thirty eight years and I knew him for twenty six, and I think both should be said out loud. Would you or Jenny be willing to speak too? Three minutes is plenty. If neither of you wants to stand up, that is completely fine, and we can ask the celebrant to read something from you both instead."

If you are an adult child and the second spouse has been handed the eulogy:

"I know you are organising the service and I am not trying to take anything over. Could I have three or four minutes to say something about Dad as our father? I will keep it to that and I will not go anywhere near the years before you. I would just rather his children were heard in the room."

If you have been asked to speak for the whole family and you do not want to:

"I can't speak for all of us. I would end up leaving someone out and I do not want that to be the thing anyone remembers about Saturday. I will happily write my own part and read it, or I will write something and have the celebrant read it. What I can't do is stand up as the family's voice."

If nobody can face it, the celebrant or officiant will read on the family's behalf. This is normal and it is not a failure:

"There are two of us who want something said and neither of us can get through it. Could we send you both pieces and have you read them, saying who each one is from? About three minutes each. We would rather it was read well by you than badly by us."

And the one conversation that prevents nearly every argument, which is agreeing in advance who names whom:

"Before we write these, can we agree two things? I will mention Mum once, by name, because she was married to him for sixteen years and she is Jenny's mother and mine. And I will say your name and thank you for the last year, properly, in front of everyone. Then neither of us is sitting there waiting to see whether we get left out."

If you and a sibling are both speaking, there is a second coordination problem: not repeating each other. The handoff lines and the chapter method in writing a eulogy with siblings work the same way across a blended family as they do between brothers and sisters.

Five complete tributes for a blended family

Read these out loud. They are written at the length they should be spoken, roughly three minutes each except the paired ones, which are ninety seconds each. Change the names and keep the shape.

1. From a second wife, with his children in the front row

Careful, generous, does not claim the whole story. This is the register that stops a room tensing up.

I married Ray in 1999, so I got the second half. I want to say that first, because the people in the front row got the first half, and they knew a younger man than I ever did.

The Ray I married was fifty three and had already given up pretending to enjoy camping. He had reading glasses on his head and another pair in the car and he never once knew where either pair was. He made coffee at half past five because he liked the house while it was still dark. For twenty six years I woke up to a kettle and a man talking quietly back to the radio.

He was proud of his children in a way he was not good at saying to them. I heard about it instead. I heard about Michael's car, the one with the gearbox, about nine times. I heard about the day Jenny got the keys to her first flat, and how she had already bought a toaster, and how that was apparently the funniest thing anyone had ever done. He kept their school photos in the drawer with the passports, which is where he kept the things he could not lose.

He was stubborn. He was late to everything except the airport, where he was two hours early. He rewired a plug for me in 2004 and mentioned it until 2019.

The last eleven months were hospitals. I am not going to describe them here. What I will say is that he was polite to every nurse on that ward, he complained to me instead, and he asked about his children every single day, including the days he could not finish a sentence.

People have been very kind this week, and more than one of them has told me I was the love of his life. I do not need that, and I do not think it is mine to take. Carol raised his children. I got the quiet years. The quiet years were good, and both of those things are allowed to be true at once.

Ray, thank you for the coffee, and the radio, and twenty six years of knowing exactly where I was at ten o'clock at night. I hope somebody in the next place keeps track of your glasses.

2. From an adult son, with his mother and his stepmother both in the room

Plain, a little withheld, honest about the divorce without putting it on trial. Notice how short the sentence about it is.

I'm Michael, Ray's son. Jenny asked me to do this part, and Diane is speaking after me, so I am only going to talk about the dad part.

He taught me to drive in a Vauxhall Cavalier in the car park behind the leisure centre, on Sunday mornings, because he said Sunday mornings were when the bad drivers were in church. He did not raise his voice once in nine weeks. He did grip the handle above the door hard enough that I could hear the plastic.

He was a quantity surveyor for thirty one years and he could tell you what any building in this town cost, whether you asked or not. He was the only man I have met who read the whole manual. He kept receipts in date order in a biscuit tin. When I bought my first house he turned up uninvited with a spirit level and told me the kitchen floor was out by four millimetres, and he was right, and he never let it go.

My parents divorced when I was sixteen. Everyone here knows that, so I am saying it once and moving on. What I will say is that the years after it were the years I actually got to know him. He rang on Sunday nights. He was better at Sunday nights than he had ever been at Tuesdays. For twenty years, that phone call was the fixed point in my week, and I did not understand that it was until the Sunday it did not come.

Diane. You got him to the doctor in the February when he would not go. You did the night shifts and you did not tell us how bad they were because you knew we would not sleep. I want that said in front of everybody, not in a kitchen afterwards.

Mum, you were married to him for sixteen years. Jenny and I are the proof of those years and we are sitting here because of how you raised us.

Dad, I still have the spirit level. The floor is still out by four millimetres. I think about you every time I walk across it.

3. Two short tributes written to be read back to back

Ninety seconds each, for a service with a tight slot or a family that would rather do this quickly than well. The second husband goes first and hands over by name. Neither one tries to cover the whole life.

Part one, read by Peter, her husband of nine years.

Anne and I met at a choir we had both joined to get out of the house. She sang louder than she could sing, which is the best kind of singing, and she told me on the second week that my tie was wrong. She was right about the tie.

Nine years is not long. I knew it was not long while it was happening, which is a strange sort of gift, and it meant we did not waste much of it. We went to Whitby eleven times. She could not be persuaded to go anywhere else.

What I want to tell you about her is the thing she did on the phone. She would ring her daughters on a Thursday and she would start every call by saying "nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong", before either of them could get frightened. She had been a mother for forty years longer than she had been my wife, and she was a mother first, every time.

So the rest of her belongs to Ruth. Ruth, come up.

Part two, read by Ruth, her daughter.

Thank you, Peter. I'll take the first forty years then.

Mum worked in the same school office for twenty two years and knew the name of every child who came through it, including the ones who were a nightmare, especially the ones who were a nightmare. She was five foot one. She once stopped a fight in a corridor by standing between two sixteen year old boys and saying "absolutely not".

She taught my sister and me to swim, to make pastry badly, and to write thank you letters on the day, not the week after. She lost our dad in 2009 and she was flattened by it, and then in 2016 she joined a choir to get out of the house, and she met Peter, and we got our mother back.

Mum, the pastry is still terrible. Thank you for everything, from both of us.

4. From a stepdaughter, about a stepfather who arrived late

Warmer, lighter, and honest that he was not her father. Honesty is what makes the affection believable.

Bill was not my dad. I want to get that out of the way, because he would have hated anyone pretending otherwise, and because what he actually was is more interesting.

He arrived when I was twelve, which is the worst possible age for a man to arrive. I gave him two years of absolute silence at the dinner table. He responded by asking me, every single evening, how my day had been. Every evening. For two years. I have never in my life met a more patient act of stubbornness.

He taught me to reverse a trailer, which I have needed exactly once, and to put a shelf up, which I have needed constantly. He came to my graduation in a suit that was too hot for the day and he stood at the back taking photographs of the wrong person for the first fifteen minutes. He drove four hours to help me move flat when I was twenty six and said nothing at all about the man I was moving in with, which turned out to be the correct call, and he never once said I told you so about it afterwards.

He called me "young lady" until I was thirty eight years old.

I never called him Dad. I called him Bill, and in the end I called him most Sundays. Last year, in the hospital, a nurse asked if I was his daughter and I said yes before I had thought about it. He heard me. He did not make anything of it, because he was not that sort of man, but he heard me, and I'm glad he did.

Mum, you chose well the second time. Bill, thank you for the shelves and the Sundays and for asking about my day for two years while I said nothing back.

When the two families cannot agree

Give each side its own slot and stop trying to produce one agreed version. Almost every blended family argument about a eulogy is really an argument about a single sentence, usually a sentence about the first marriage or about the last year, and the fix is structural: two tributes, clearly attributed, means nobody has to approve anybody else's sentence.

If that is still not possible, there are three further options, in order of how often they work:

• The celebrant reads both. A neutral voice reading two attributed pieces defuses most of it. Say who each piece is from before reading it.
• One tribute, one reading. One side gives the spoken tribute and the other chooses and reads a poem or a passage. Both are heard, neither is competing.
• Printed in the order of service. A piece that would cause a row said out loud can sit on the page instead. People read it, keep it, and take it home.

What does not work is one person writing a tribute that tries to represent everybody. It reads as a committee document, it pleases nobody, and the writer spends the week before the funeral negotiating instead of grieving.

How to name a first marriage without making the eulogy about the divorce

Name it once, in one short factual sentence, with no explanation attached. The eulogy is about the person who died, not about how their marriages ended, and a single plain mention lands as respect while a paragraph lands as a case being made. Here are the lines that cause trouble and what to say instead.

Instead of "after his first marriage ended, he finally found real happiness with Diane", say:

"He was married to Carol for sixteen years, and they had Michael and Jenny. He married Diane in 1999."

Instead of "Anne had a difficult first marriage", say:

"Anne and David were married for thirty one years and raised two daughters."

Instead of "she was the love of his life", if there are children from an earlier marriage sitting in front of you, say:

"He had two good marriages. I only know about the second one, so that is the part I am going to talk about."

Instead of "we all know things were not easy at home in those years", say nothing. That sentence has no version that helps anyone in the room, and the people it refers to will hear it for the rest of their lives.

If the relationship itself was genuinely bad and you are the one speaking, the honest-without-cruelty approach in how to write a eulogy for a difficult person applies directly: say the true thing at the smallest size it can be said.

Who normally gives the eulogy at a funeral?

Usually the surviving spouse, an adult child, a sibling or a close friend, chosen by the family rather than assigned by any rule. Where someone was remarried, the two most common speakers are the second spouse and one adult child from the first marriage, taking three minutes each. A celebrant, officiant or minister can read a tribute instead if no family member wants to stand up.

Can multiple people give a eulogy?

Yes, and in a blended family two or three speakers is the better arrangement. Keep each tribute to two or three minutes, agree who covers which years, and have each speaker hand over by name so the service does not stall. Most crematorium slots are twenty minutes in total, so three speakers at three minutes each still fits comfortably with music and committal.

What should you not put in a eulogy?

Leave out the details of the divorce, any comparison between the two marriages, money, the will, old grievances, and anything you have not checked with the person it is about if they are alive and in the room. Also leave out the medical detail of the last weeks. One sentence that the illness happened is enough for anybody listening.

How long should a eulogy last?

Three to five minutes for a single speaker, which is roughly 420 to 750 words at a spoken pace of about 140 words a minute. When two people are speaking, two or three minutes each is better, so the total stays under seven. A three minute tribute read at a normal pace is about 420 words, which is shorter than most people expect when they start writing.

What is the best opening line for a eulogy?

The one that says who you are and which part of their life you are covering. In a second marriage that is doing real work: "I married Ray in 1999, so I got the second half" tells the room what to expect and quietly reassures everyone that nothing is being taken from them. Avoid opening with a quotation or a dictionary definition.

You do not have to produce the official version of his life on Saturday. You have to stand up for three minutes and say the true part you know, and let somebody else say theirs. If the three minutes will not start, you can see a free draft before you decide anything, and then write over the top of it in your own words.