A funeral service script you can read word for word

Be at the front before the doors open, and let the music do the work while people come in. When the director gives you the nod, cue the room to stand for the family, and to sit once they are settled.

Speak more slowly than feels natural. If your voice goes, stop and breathe.

Good morning. Please, be seated. We are here today for Eleanor. On behalf of the family, thank you for being here. My name is Susan. Eleanor taught me in the fourth grade, and she never entirely stopped. Some of you knew her for longer than I have been alive. Some of you met her once and remember it. For the next while, this room is hers. You do not need to do anything this morning except be here — and you have already done that.

Read this one. Do not improvise it. If your voice goes, stop and begin the sentence again.

Eleanor was born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1938, the third of five. She taught fourth grade at Lincoln for thirty-one years, and there are people sitting in this room who were nine years old in her classroom and still cannot bring themselves to call her Eleanor. She married Walter in 1962; she lost him in 2011, and kept his roses going every summer since. She raised Peter and Anne in the house on Linden Street, and never once locked the back door. Six grandchildren learned to bake in that kitchen, and every one of them believed they were the favourite. That was not an accident, and she never corrected any of them. That is the outline. But an outline is not a person, and what the people in this room know is what Eleanor was actually like to be around. She was patient the way a teacher is patient — on purpose, as a decision, all the way to the end. She kept every letter anyone ever sent her. She won at cards more often than chance allows, and never once explained how. She was eighty-seven. She had her garden, her street, her family, and her own opinions about all three — and she knew, because the people in this room made sure she knew, that she was loved.

Name Ruth, and wait until she is at the lectern before you sit down. Have a spare printed copy in your folder.

Eleanor’s neighbour of forty years, Ruth, is going to read the twenty-third psalm — the one Eleanor asked for by name, long before any of us wanted to talk about it.

Peter has his own copy. Stay standing where he can see you. If he stops, wait — do not take the page unless he hands it to you.

Her son Peter is going to speak for the family now.

When Peter is back in his seat, wait one breath. Then count slowly to thirty. It will feel much longer than it is. Do not cut it short.

Let us take a moment now — quietly, in whatever way is yours — to remember her.

The room changes here — this is the formal goodbye. Slower again, and steady.

And now we let Eleanor go — from our keeping, never from our lives. Eleanor: for the years, for the patience, for everything that outlasted the classroom — thank you. What we learned from you, we keep. What you were to us, we keep. Rest now.

Give the cue you agreed with the director, then sit. Let it play all the way through — the silence after the last verse is part of it.

Eleanor chose this hymn herself, and she sang it all her life — usually, Ruth tells me, half a step ahead of the organ. Abide With Me.

The last line is the cue for the room to stand. Do not give it early.

On behalf of Peter and Anne, and Eleanor’s six grandchildren, thank you for being here. There is tea at the house on Linden Street afterwards, and the family would like you to come. We came to say her name in a room full of people who loved her. We have done that. Go gently.

Cue the room as the family leaves, and stay at the front until the director moves you — the family goes first.

Would you please rise as the family leaves us.