What to say at your father's funeral

A common problem with speaking about a father: you go looking for the things he said, and there is very little there.

Men of an older generation often expressed almost nothing directly. If your material is declarations of affection, you will have a thin speech and feel guilty about it.

Change what you are looking for.

Look at what he did

The evidence is in actions, and it is usually abundant once you start counting.

• The lifts. Airports at five in the morning, station car parks, a friend's house forty miles away.
• The thing he fixed without being asked, and never mentioned.
• The job he stayed in because it was steady, when he would rather have done something else.
• The way he stood at the door until the car was out of sight.

Describe three of those precisely and the room will understand exactly what kind of man he was. You do not need to add the conclusion.

What he was like before you

Ask his brother, his old colleague, his friend from school. Most people discover this week that their father had a whole life they know nothing about: a band, a motorbike, a year abroad, a girlfriend before their mother.

This is the best material available and it is free for the asking. It also gives the room something new, which after the third speaker is worth a great deal.

A structure

1. Who you are.
2. One image of him, very specific — where he sat, what he wore, what was always on the table beside him.
3. A story about something he did for someone.
4. Something you learned about him recently, from someone else.
5. What you got from him, in one sentence. Stop.

Worked example

I'm Tom, his son.

Dad had a chair. Nobody else sat in it, and there was never a rule about it. On the arm there was a mug, the newspaper folded to the crossword, and a pen he'd taken from work in about 1986.

He drove me to Bristol every September for four years. Three hours there, three hours back, the same day. He never once suggested I get the train, and he never once said he didn't mind doing it.

Last week his friend Ray told me that when they were nineteen they hitchhiked to Scotland with eleven pounds between them and slept in a bus shelter. In forty-one years, he never mentioned it to me.

He was not a talker. But I have never had to wonder whether he would turn up, and I know now what a rare thing that is to be able to say about anyone.

If it was difficult

Some fathers were absent, or worse. You are not required to produce warmth you do not have, and a room can hear a false note from the back row.

Two honest options. Keep it short and factual — where he was born, what he did, who survives him — and let someone else speak to the rest. Or name one real thing without building a case around it: he taught you to swim, he was good with engines, he was funny in company.

Nobody at a funeral expects a verdict. They expect you to stand up, which is itself the tribute.