Obituary Examples for a Grandmother

A grandmother's obituary is often written by a grandchild: the one who is good with words, or the one who lived closest, or simply the one who was asked. It is a different job from writing about a parent. There is more distance, and more affection you never had to earn. Names and towns below are invented.

The short notice (about 60 words)

Evelyn Rose Baker, 91, of Greenville, South Carolina, died on September 11, 2026. She was preceded in death by her husband, Harold, and is survived by her children, Nancy, Robert and Susan; nine grandchildren; and seventeen great-grandchildren. A funeral will be held Monday, September 15, at 11:00 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, with burial at Woodlawn.

The standard obituary (about 210 words)

Evelyn Rose Baker, 91, of Greenville, died on September 11, 2026, at the home she had lived in since 1958.

Evelyn was born in Spartanburg in 1935, married Harold Baker at nineteen, and spent the next sixty-two years making that house on Augusta Road the place everyone came back to. She raised three children, then helped raise nine grandchildren, and for the last fifteen years there was rarely a Sunday without a great-grandchild asleep on her lap.

She sewed every wedding dress in the family, kept a garden that fed the street, and sent a handwritten birthday card to every one of her thirty descendants every year, on time, with a five-dollar bill in it, regardless of their age or income. She played bridge on Tuesdays for fifty years and was not a gracious loser. She was a member of First Presbyterian for seventy-two years and sang in the choir for sixty of them.

She was preceded in death by Harold in 2017. She is survived by her children, Nancy Baker Hughes, Robert Baker and Susan Baker Lott; nine grandchildren; seventeen great-grandchildren; and her sister, Marjorie. A funeral will be held Monday, September 15, at 11:00 a.m. at First Presbyterian. In lieu of flowers, put five dollars in a card and give it to a child.

Written by a grandchild (about 170 words)

Our grandmother, Evelyn Baker, died on Thursday at home, at 91, in the house where every one of us learned to walk.

You could not visit Nana without eating. You could not leave without a container. She sewed our wedding dresses and our Halloween costumes and, once, a parachute for a hamster. She sent thirty birthday cards a year with five dollars in each, and she knew when you had not cashed it. She taught all nine of us to play bridge and beat all nine of us at it, regularly, until this summer.

She buried Grandpa in 2017 and went right on living, loudly, because, she said, somebody had to keep an eye on us. We are not sure who will now.

The service is Monday at 11 at First Presbyterian, where she sang for sixty years. Come. There will be food; she would have insisted.

A great-grandmother, briefly

Josephine "Josie" Marchetti, 97, of Providence, died on September 4, 2026, surrounded by four generations of the family she started. Born in Naples in 1929, she came to America at nineteen with one suitcase and a recipe for Sunday gravy that is still made every week in eleven kitchens. She is survived by her children, Anthony and Maria; seven grandchildren; fifteen great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren she got to hold. Funeral Mass Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at Holy Ghost Church.

A grandmother who raised you

When a grandmother was the parent in every way that counts, say so. It is the truest thing in the obituary and the thing she would most want known.

Bernice Louise Carter, 79, of Detroit, died on September 8, 2026.

Bernice raised two families. The first was her own four children. The second was her grandchildren, Marcus, Keisha and Dre, who came to live with her in 1998 and never left, in the ways that matter. She worked thirty-two years at Henry Ford Hospital in the kitchen, took the bus home, and made dinner for whoever was at the table, and there was always someone. She got all three of them through high school and two of them through college on a hospital kitchen salary and sheer refusal.

She is survived by her children, Denise, Robert, Angela and Michael; her grandchildren, including the three she called "mine"; and eleven great-grandchildren. Homegoing service Saturday, September 13, at 11:00 a.m. at Greater Grace Temple.

Listing a large family

• Children by name, then counts. "Nine grandchildren; seventeen great-grandchildren" reads as love. Thirty names reads as a census, and someone will be left out.
• If the grandchildren are listed, list all of them or none. A grandmother would not have chosen.
• Include the ones who came by marriage if she counted them, and she usually did.
• Great-grandchildren as a number, always, unless there are fewer than four.