Eulogy for Grandma: How to Write a Tribute to Your Grandmother

My name is Danielle, and I have the honor of being Dorothy Mae Jenkins’s granddaughter. Today, we gather to remember and celebrate the life of a remarkable woman we all knew as Grandma Dot.

Grandma Dot was elegant and strict, with a soft heart she liked to keep tucked away. She never left the house without her lipstick just right and a hat on her head. For over fifty years, she ushered at church in her white gloves, standing tall and proud. If she looked at you over her glasses, you knew to straighten up. She could hush a room full of teenagers with nothing more than that look.

She was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1934, one of nine children. In 1955 she moved up to Chicago’s South Side, and in 1956 married my granddaddy, Earl Jenkins. They built a life and a family together until he passed in 1998. They raised three children—my mom Denise, and my uncles Ray and Calvin. Later, she raised me and my brother Marcus from the time I was seven. Her hands were always busy: for forty years, she did alterations and dressmaking from her front room, making sure everyone left looking their best.

Grandma Dot loved her rose bushes along the front fence, and she would check on them every morning, no matter the weather. She played Mahalia Jackson records on Sunday mornings, humming along as she cooked. There was always a peppermint in her purse, ready for a fidgety child at church. And every weekday at ten, she watched The Price Is Right, calling out the prices before the contestants did, shaking her head when they got it wrong.

She was always present. She came to every parent-teacher conference in her church hat, sat right in the front row, and took notes in a little spiral notebook. She sewed my prom dress by hand at her kitchen table, every stitch perfect. When I left for college, she pinned a twenty-dollar bill inside the lining of my coat “for emergencies only.” I never used it, and it’s still there today, a quiet reminder of her care.

She never lost her sense of humor. Grandma Dot called our pastor ‘young man’ right up until he turned sixty, and even then she said, “You’re just getting started.”

She taught us all to do things properly or not at all, to hold our heads up, and that family is whoever shows up and stays. She shaped her children, grandchildren, and this community with her strength, her discipline, and her love—even when she didn’t say it out loud.

I want to thank her sister, my great-aunt Lorraine, who called her every morning at eight. Her church family and the usher board who brought Sunday dinner when she couldn’t make it herself. And her hospice nurse, Angela, for her gentle care.

Grandma Dot kept a pillow in her front room with words from Proverbs: “Her children arise up, and call her blessed.” Today, we do just that.

Grandma, thank you for taking us in and raising us. Rest now, and give Granddaddy Earl our love.

My name is Tom, and I’m one of June Mitchell’s eleven lucky grandkids. I know I’m speaking for all of us today. We’re here because we loved Nanna June, and we want to remember her together.

Nanna grew up on a dairy farm near Warrnambool, which probably explains why she was so tough and so practical. She taught Grade 1 in Geelong for thirty-two years—hundreds of kids learned to read at her knee. She married my Pop, Bill, in 1963, and together they raised four kids, then watched the family grow to eleven grandkids and three great-grandkids.

If you ever met Nanna, you know she had a laugh that carried across the street and not a lot of patience for fuss. She believed in saying what you meant and then getting on with it. She wasn’t one for sitting around. Even at eighty, she was the first one in the water at our family Christmas at the beach. That was Nanna—always up, always moving, and always a little bit bossy, in the best possible way.

She loved her morning swims at Torquay, rain or shine. She cheered for the Cats. And she wrote letters—the old-fashioned kind, on blue airmail paper. When I moved to London at twenty-two, she sent me a letter every two weeks for two years. The weather, the footy, bowls club gossip. I kept every one of those fifty-one letters. My cousins and I chose words for Nanna: fearless, generous, bossy, and, from Ella—home.

She taught us all to get in the water. That meant more than swimming. It meant don’t stand on the edge, have a go, live your life.

I want to thank Aunty Sue, who took care of her this last year, and the nurses who helped at the end. Nanna, I’ll keep every letter. And I promise, I’ll get in the water. Thank you.