When your dad has passed away and the funeral is over it can be hard to find peace.
After my dads funeral I went looking for poems. Most of what I found was written to be read at a service, which is lovely, but it wasn’t what I needed.
I wanted words for afterwards when I was missing him on a regular day. For his birthday. And for the things I never got to say.
So that’s what this collection is. If you need something for the funeral itself,l our funeral poems for dad are written for reading at a service. These ones are for you and dealing with the months and years after. Most are originals I’ve written for this site and a few are older poems that have stayed with me.
Poems About Missing Your Dad
These are for the ordinary days when nothing in particular happens and you miss him anyway.
His Chair
We never said we wouldn’t,
it’s just that no one does.
The cushion still dips on the left
where he leaned to reach the remote,
the paper, the cup of coffee gone cold.
Some nights I sit across from it
and tell it about my day.
It doesn’t answer.
Neither, really, did he.
He just listened,
and somehow that was always enough.
By Sally
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I Still Reach for the Phone
when the car makes that noise,
when the game goes to overtime,
when I’ve done something right
and want somebody to be proud.
My thumb finds your name
before my heart remembers.
I haven’t deleted it.
I don’t think I ever will.
Some numbers you keep
just to know they were yours.
By Sally
******************
The Ordinary Things
though they are hard enough.
It’s the hardware store on a Saturday,
the smell of cut grass and gasoline,
a man in a ball cap who whistles
the way you used to whistle,
half a tune and never the ending.
I miss you most in the ordinary things,
because that is where you lived,
quietly, every single day,
holding the whole thing up
without ever asking
to be thanked.
By Sally
******************
Where You Are Now
I’ve stopped pretending that I do.
But I know where you’re not:
not at the head of the table,
not in the doorway with your keys,
not at the other end of the line.
And I know where you still are:
in the way I fold a shirt,
in the joke I tell too often,
in the stubborn set of my jaw
when somebody tells me no.
You’re here in all the places
you didn’t know you’d left yourself.
By Sally
******************
Your Hands
Rough at the knuckles, a nick on the thumb
that never quite healed.
Hands that fixed the chain on my bike,
that held the back of the seat
and let go before I knew it.
That’s what you did my whole life, I think.
Held on, then let go,
then stood back and watched me ride.
I’m still riding, Dad.
I still look back sometimes
to see if you’re there.
By Sally
******************
Grief Is a Room in the House
It didn’t. It moved in.
It took the spare room at the end of the hall
and it lives there now.
Some days the door is shut
and I walk right past it.
Some days it swings open
and I sit inside for hours.
I’ve stopped waiting for it to leave.
It’s where I keep you now,
and I’d rather have the room
than lose the house.
By Sally
Poems About Losing Your Father, From a Daughter
There’s something particular about losing the first man who ever made you feel safe and these try to make sense of that.
Daddy’s Girl
I had a mortgage and a job
and gray coming in at my temples.
But when the nurse said it was time,
I was six years old again,
standing on your feet in the kitchen
while you danced me round the table,
and I said Daddy
for the first time in thirty years.
I’ll always be your girl.
That part didn’t die with you.
By Sally
******************
Who Will Walk Me Now
to the car the night of prom,
down the aisle in borrowed shoes
that pinched the whole way through.
You walked me through the hard years
without ever saying much,
just there, a step behind,
close enough to catch me.
Who will walk me now, Dad?
I guess I’ll walk myself.
But I’ll go the way you taught me,
head up, and not too fast.
By Sally
******************
The First Man I Loved
and the measure of every one since.
Not because you were perfect,
we both know that you weren’t,
but because you showed up.
Every recital, every phone call,
every time I fell apart
and needed someone steady.
The world feels less steady now.
But I carry what you gave me,
and I’m learning, slowly,
how to be steady for myself.
By Sally
Poems About Losing Your Father, From a Son
We Never Said It
We said it with a socket wrench,
a fishing line, a ballgame on the radio,
a hand on the shoulder at the door.
I wish I’d said it louder.
I think you knew.
I think that’s what the long drives were,
the coffee in the truck before dawn,
the way you’d say drive safe
like it meant everything.
It did. I know that now.
I love you, Dad.
I’m saying it out loud.
By Sally
******************
My Father’s Son
and for a second it was you.
Same tired eyes, same crease in the brow,
same way of standing with my weight on one foot.
I used to fight it, being like you.
I wanted to be my own man.
Now I’m grateful for every piece of you
that shows up in my face,
because it means you’re not all gone.
I’m still my father’s son.
I’ll try to be a good one.
By Sally
******************
The Toolbox
I said yes before she’d finished asking.
It’s in my garage now, red paint chipped,
everything exactly where you kept it.
I haven’t moved a thing.
Sometimes I open the lid
just to smell the oil and metal
and the faint, stubborn trace of you.
You taught me every tool in there.
You never taught me how to do this.
I’m figuring it out, Dad,
one Saturday at a time.
By Sally
Short Poems About the Loss of a Father
These work well in a sympathy card, a social media post on the anniversary, a memorial frame or a page of a journal.
Missing You
I didn’t think it would.
It turns a little slower now,
but Dad, it turns for good.
By Sally
******************
Still Here
but I still feel you everywhere.
By Sally
******************
The Lesson
I wish you’d taught me this,
how to keep on living
with someone I so miss.
By Sally
******************
Every Day
That’s what people say.
It’s true, Dad.
Not one day.
By Sally
******************
Your Footsteps
and know they can’t be real.
But love’s a stubborn thing, I’ve found.
It hears what hearts still feel.
By Sally
******************
Forever My Dad
gone from the phone,
but never from me.
You’re forever my dad.
By Sally
******************
Quiet Strength
you never asked for praise.
You simply loved us, rain or shine,
for all our ordinary days.
By Sally
******************
Half of Me
your laugh, your stubborn streak.
So when I miss you, Dad, I look
within. It’s you I seek.
By Sally
If you want even shorter lines for a caption or card our I miss you dad quotes and loss of father quotes have lots more.
Poems for Father’s Day, His Birthday and Other Hard Days
Those big milestones can be cruel after a loss. Father’s Day is everywhere and his birthday comes around whether you’re ready or not.
Father’s Day
for grilling dads and golfing dads,
for dads who snore and dads who joke,
and I walk past them all.
I don’t have anywhere to send it now.
So I’m writing it here instead:
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
You were the best gift I never had to wrap.
I hope wherever you are,
someone’s making you breakfast
and letting you pick the channel.
By Sally
******************
Your Birthday
Got all the way to the register
before I remembered.
I bought it anyway.
I wrote in it what I’d have written,
the same dumb joke about your age,
and signed it with love like always.
It’s in the drawer with the others now.
One for every year you’ve been gone.
I’ll keep buying them, Dad.
You never missed one of mine.
By Sally
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One Year Today
I’ve survived every first without you:
the first Thanksgiving, the first snow,
the first time something good happened
and I had no one to tell who’d care the way you did.
People think the year mark means it’s over.
It doesn’t. It just means I know now
that I can carry this.
Not lightly. Not well, some days.
But I can carry it, Dad.
You built me strong enough for that.
By Sally
******************
An Empty Place at the Table
and nobody knew where to sit.
We stood there holding our plates,
all of us looking at your chair.
In the end my brother sat in it,
and nobody said a word,
and then someone told the story
about you and the turkey fryer,
and we laughed until we cried.
That’s how we kept you there, Dad.
Not with the chair. With the stories.
By Sally
For more on getting through these days we have pages for happy birthday in heaven messages, death anniversary quotes and remembering loved ones at Christmas.
Poems for When You Didn’t Get to Say Goodbye
The Last Time
I’d have stayed longer at the door.
I’d have said something better than
see you Sunday,
I’d have hugged you twice.
But maybe it’s better I didn’t know.
Our last time was an ordinary one,
easy and unguarded,
you waving from the porch
like you would be there forever.
And in my heart, Dad,
that’s exactly where you’ll stay.
By Sally
******************
Unfinished
A question I meant to ask about Grandpa.
A thank you I was saving
for some day when it felt less awkward.
Everything between us feels unfinished now,
like a sentence cut off in the middle.
But I’m starting to believe
you heard the rest of it anyway.
Fathers usually do.
They hear what we mean
long before we say it.
By Sally
If someone you know has lost their father suddenly our guide on what to say when someone dies unexpectedly might help you find the right words for them.
Poems for a Complicated Relationship With Your Dad
Not every father was easy to love. If yours was distant, difficult or absent you’re still allowed to grieve him and grieve the dad you hoped he’d be. These poems are for that which is so rarely talked about.
The Father I Wanted
The one you were,
with your temper and your silences
and the years we didn’t speak.
And the one I always hoped you’d be.
The one who’d call just to talk.
Who’d say he was proud of me
without being asked.
You’re gone now, and so is he,
that father I kept waiting for.
I didn’t know I could miss
someone who was never really there.
But I do. I miss you both.
By Sally
******************
Some Kind of Peace
We ran out of time to try.
I’m angry still, and sad as well,
and things I can’t explain or tell.
But somewhere under all of that
there’s a little kid in a too-big hat
riding high on your shoulders at the fair.
She loved you, Dad. She’s still in there.
And for her sake, I’ll let it be
some kind of peace for you and me.
By Sally
If you’re supporting someone through this you might find our condolence messages for the loss of an estranged parent helpful.
Classic Poems About Fathers
These two older poems are in the public domain so you’re free to use them.
Only a Dad
Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame
To show how well he has played the game;
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.
Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.
Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd,
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.
Only a dad but he gives his all,
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing with courage stern and grim
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen:
Only a dad, but the best of men.
By Edgar Guest
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The Self-Unseeing
Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.
She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!
By Thomas Hardy
Modern Poems Worth Reading
There are some wonderful modern poems about fathers that are still under copyright so I can’t share them here. But they’re easy to find in a library or a quick search, and they’re worth it.
- Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. A son looks back on the cold mornings his father got up early to warm the house, and realizes far too late how much love was in that quiet work.
- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas. Written as his father’s health was failing, it’s a fierce plea for him to fight. Better for the anger of grief than the peace of it.
- Follower by Seamus Heaney. A boy who once stumbled behind his farmer father now finds the roles reversed as his dad grows old.
- My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke. A short, complicated memory of being swung round the kitchen by a father. People read it very differently, which is part of why it stays with you.
Ways to Use These Poems
A poem doesn’t have to be read at a funeral to matter.
- Write one in a journal. Copying a poem out by hand, then writing a few lines of your own underneath, can be a gentle way into the feelings you haven’t found words for yet.
- Frame a short verse next to a favorite photo of him, or slip one into the back of the frame where only you know it’s there.
- Share one on his anniversary or birthday. A short poem in a social media post lets family and friends know you’re thinking of him, and they often reply with memories of their own.
- Read one at the grave or wherever his ashes were scattered. It gives you something to say when you don’t know what to say.
- Tuck one into a sympathy card for a friend who has just lost their dad, alongside a few words of sympathy for the loss of a father.
- Use a line in a tribute or eulogy. If you’re writing something longer, our tribute messages for a father and eulogy examples for a father can help you build around it.
Final Thoughts
I hope one of these poems said something you’ve been feeling. If none of them quite fit try writing your own.
It doesn’t have to rhyme and it doesn’t have to be good. You can find more ideas in our collections of poems about grief and sympathy poems.
