How to Write a Eulogy

My mother, Eleanor Grace Murphy, believed that the best version of any day included a long walk, a good meal made from scratch, and a conversation that lasted too long into the evening. She packed an extraordinary amount of living into 74 years.

I've been trying to think of how to describe her to people who didn't know her, and the best I can do is this: my mother was the person who made wherever she was feel like the right place to be. She had a gift for presence. When she sat down with you, she was fully there — not thinking about the next thing, not distracted, just genuinely interested in you and what you had to say. My friends growing up didn't just like her; they sought her out. Half of them confessed to me in adulthood that they'd told my mother things they hadn't told their own parents.

She was also, as many of you know, a formidable cook who had very strong opinions about garlic. Her rule was simple: whatever a recipe calls for, double it. This applied to garlic. It applied to kindness. It applied to love.

In her last years, after my father passed, she surprised everyone by taking up painting. Not hobbyist painting — serious, committed, embarrassingly good painting. She had a studio by the window she called her 'corner of the day' and she'd be there every morning before anyone else was awake, making something out of nothing. I think that was always her greatest skill.

She made things out of nothing. She made a home out of a house, a community out of neighbors, a family out of flawed and complicated people who were better for her attention.

I'll miss her every day. I miss her already. But I also know that the things she built — the connections, the values, the stubborn warmth she brought to every room — don't end here. They live in every person she touched. They live in this room, right now.

Mom: we're going to keep doubling the garlic. We promise.

Sam Chen had a theory that the best way to get to know someone was to drive somewhere far away with them and get slightly lost. He applied this theory liberally, which is why several of us in this room have spent unplanned nights in unfamiliar towns, eating at diners that turned out to be incredible, having conversations we never would have had if the trip had gone according to plan.

That was Sam. He had a talent for finding the good thing inside the unexpected thing. He had patience for detours that most of us lacked, and an unshakeable belief that where you ended up was probably fine — maybe even better.

I've known Sam for twenty-two years. We met in our first week of college, bonded over a mutual hatred of a particular required reading, and somehow never ran out of things to say to each other after that. He was the person I called when things were going wrong. More importantly, he was the person I called when things were going right — because celebrating with Sam, who was genuinely happy for you in a way that felt real and unguarded, was one of the great pleasures of being his friend.

He was a father who showed up. He was a partner who listened. He was a friend who remembered. He remembered your birthday, your kid's recital, the thing you were anxious about three months ago that you'd almost forgotten you'd told him.

I keep wanting to pick up the phone and call him. I want to tell him that we all came today. That the room is full. That everyone who ever took one of his detours showed up, and we're all a little lost without him, and I think he would find the right words for that.

I love you, Sam. I'll think of you every time I take a wrong turn.

My grandfather, Harold James Okafor, had a workshop in the basement of the house on Elm Street that smelled like wood shavings and motor oil and something I could only describe, even now, as possibility. He spent decades down there fixing things — radios, lamps, clocks, chairs — and I spent a lot of my childhood sitting on a stool next to him, handing him tools I didn't know the names of and asking questions he always had time to answer.

Grandpa had a philosophy about things that were broken: almost nothing couldn't be fixed with patience and the right approach. He applied this to furniture. He applied it to relationships. He applied it to people, including me, on more than one occasion.

He immigrated here at 26 with almost nothing, built a life through work and stubbornness and community, raised four kids, retired at 70 with no intention of slowing down, and spent the last decade learning woodworking so he could make furniture by hand for every grandchild who got married. I have my table. My cousins have theirs. We will keep them forever.

He was the kind of man who stood up straight and meant what he said. He didn't talk much in groups, but what he said mattered. He believed in showing up early and staying late. He believed in a firm handshake and following through. He believed that the measure of a person was how they treated the people they didn't have to be kind to.

He was 81 years old, and he had a full life — a life that was full of difficulty and joy and work and love in roughly equal measure, which I think is the best any of us can hope for.

Thank you, Grandpa, for the table. For the tools. For the time in the basement. I'll try to fix things with patience. I'll try to be the kind of person who shows up.