Free eulogy writer
and funeral speech helper

I am Vera's granddaughter. For eleven years, every Saturday, I was also her assistant.

She had a system. We left the house at eight, reached the bakery before the good rolls went, and were home with the radio on by half past nine. I was allowed to carry the eggs and nothing else, because I had dropped the eggs once, in 1998, and she was never going to let that go.

Nana kept a tin of butterscotch in the door of her car and a second tin in her handbag, in case of the first tin. She wrote the price of everything on the back of the receipt and then never looked at it again. When I failed my driving test she did not say one word about it. She handed me her keys in her own driveway and said, go round the block, I will be right here.

That was the whole of her. She stayed right there.

Nana, thank you for the Saturdays. I am keeping a tin in the car.

My father was Owen, and if you ever needed something moved, you rang him and he was already in the truck.

He worked thirty-one years at the water plant and never once called it interesting. He called it necessary, which to him was the better word. He kept a notebook in his shirt pocket with three columns in it, and I could not tell you what any of the columns meant, but when the pipes froze on Aldridge Road in February it was Dad they rang, at eleven at night, and he went.

He was not a talker. He was a doer of small quiet things. He put petrol in my car for six years without mentioning it, and I only found out because I finally beat him to the station one morning and he seemed genuinely put out about it.

The last thing he said to me, and he said it about the dog, was, she is fine, do not fuss.

Dad, we are going to fuss a little. Just today. Then we will get back to work.

My mother was Ines, and she believed no problem on this earth survived a pot of soup and a phone call.

She raised four of us in a house with one bathroom and a screen door that never once shut quietly. She worked the early shift in the hospital laundry, came home, and cooked for six on the money for four. If a neighbour's child turned up at five o'clock there was somehow a plate. I have thought about that arithmetic my whole adult life and I still cannot make it work.

She was not soft. She corrected my grammar at my own wedding. But she wrote to every one of her grandchildren, on paper, in that small careful hand, and every letter finished the same way: eat something, ring your mother.

Mum, we ate. And the four of us are ringing each other more than we used to, which is you, still working.

So I will end where you always ended. Eat something. Ring your mother.

Teddy and I met in a car park in 2003, arguing about whose dent it was. It was mine. He bought me a coffee anyway and we were friends for twenty-two years.

Teddy was the one who answered. Not the one who said the perfect thing, the one who answered, at any hour, and stayed on the line while you said nothing at all. When my marriage ended he arrived with a bag of frozen peas and no advice whatsoever, which was exactly right.

He was late to everything. Every single thing. He was late to his own surprise party, and I would like the record to show that I planned it. He would want you to know he had a reason. He always had a reason, and it was never the real reason.

I keep reaching for my phone. I have about forty things I still need to tell him and none of them matter, which is the entire point of a friend like that.

Ted, it was my dent. I have carried that for twenty-two years and I am putting it down now. Thank you for answering.