Eulogy Examples for a Colleague

We spend more waking hours with our colleagues than with almost anyone, yet they are the people most often eulogised in a job title instead of a story. A eulogy for a colleague is not a career summary — it is the two or three small, true things they did that no org chart ever recorded. Here is a complete example.

For Priya — from the desk beside hers

Priya sat two metres from me for nine years, and in that time she kept the third drawer of her desk stocked with plasters, a needle and thread, headache powders, three kinds of phone charger, and a tin of biscuits she refilled with her own money and never once mentioned. First aid for the whole floor, and not one item of it was in her job description. We went to her with the small emergencies — a lost button, a splitting head, a phone dying before an interview — because she made small things matter. You could bring her a problem the size of a paperclip and she would take it exactly as seriously as you needed her to. That is rarer than anything printed on a CV. The year my father was in ICU, I took three weeks I could not afford to take. I came back braced for the pile. There was no pile. She had done my work in my style, so no one upstairs would know I'd been gone. She never mentioned that either. She just moved my stapler back to the left side where I keep it and said, "You were never away." Priya, the drawer is still there. We've all been putting things in it — plasters, biscuits, chargers — trying to keep it the way you had it. It isn't the same. Of course it isn't. You were never the drawer. You were the person who thought to fill it, before the rest of us knew we'd need a thing. We don't know how to do that yet. We're going to try.

The structure underneath it

Refuse the CV. Open with a small, concrete thing they did that no job description contained — the stocked drawer, the remembered order, the quiet fix.
Name what that small thing revealed: how they treated a paperclip-sized problem as seriously as the person in front of them needed.
Tell one story where they carried you at a cost to themselves — and told no one they had done it.
Anchor it in one physical detail that makes the room see them: the stapler moved back to its place, the mug, the third drawer down.
Close on the gap they leave. Don't pretend the team simply carries on; say plainly that it doesn't, yet.

Delivering it

It is allowed to cry at a colleague's funeral — you are permitted to have loved the people you worked beside. Pause, breathe, begin the sentence again.
Keep water within reach and let the silences stand; at a lectern a pause reads as respect, not as losing your place.
You are not doing this alone — ask a teammate to hold a copy and be ready to finish, so the weight is shared before you ever stand up.
Print it large — 16pt or bigger, double-spaced — because a shaking hand and small type do not mix.

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Common questions

Is it appropriate for a colleague to give a eulogy?+

Yes — and families often welcome it, because a colleague holds hours of a person's life the family never saw. Speak to the family first and agree where your tribute sits in the programme.

How personal can I be about someone I only knew at work?+

Stay inside what you witnessed. The specific, ordinary things — the drawer, the covered deadline — move a room far more than grand claims, and they keep you clear of anything private the family would not want aired.

How long should a colleague's eulogy be?+

Two to three minutes, around 250 to 320 words. If several colleagues speak, agree in advance who tells which story so the same kindness isn't described three times.