Cory Monteith's character was going to become a teacher on Glee.

The late actor was the driving force behind the show according to its creator Ryan Murphy, who was planning to turn Cory's alter-ego, confused jock Finn Hudson, into a Glee Club mentor to replace Will Schuester [Matthew Morrison] before the 31-year-old star's tragic death from a heroin and alcohol overdose in July.

Ryan has now made public the touching eulogy which he read at the private memorial service held for Cory at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California, where the show is filmed. According to Entertainment Weekly, he told his fellow mourners, "For me, Cory was both the beginning and the ending of Glee ... literally ... The ending of Glee is something I have never shared with anyone, but I always knew it. I've always relied on it as a source of comfort, a North Star. At the end of season six, Lea [Michele]'s Rachel [Berry] was going to have become a big Broadway star, the role she was born to play. Finn was going to have become a teacher, settled down happily in Ohio, at peace with his choice and no longer feeling like a Lima loser. The very last line of dialogue was to be this: Rachel comes back to Ohio, fulfilled and yet not, and walks into Finn's Glee Club. 'What are you doing here?' he would ask. 'I'm home,' she would reply. Fade out. The end."

Ryan also touched upon his special bond with Cory - who left behind his long-term girlfriend and on-screen love interest Lea - and admitted the actor had become an honorary son to him as well as a role model to millions of youngsters around the world: "From the beginning Cory and I had a father-son relationship, which at that time I have to admit I did not want. I didn't know how to do that. But Cory - from a broken home, a lost boy - needed a male figure to provide guidance, support, a direction. In retrospect, Cory was kind of my training wheels for becoming the father I am today with my own child. And so he is frozen in a moment ... Cory will continue to change lives for the better. It is a rare gift to touch the lives of one person, let alone millions."