How do you write a eulogy for someone you loved?
Don't start with the opening line. Start with one memory you can still see clearly, and write it down the way you would tell it to a good friend, details and all. A eulogy is not a summary of a whole life — it is your view of it, in plain words, usually three to five minutes long.
You said yes when they asked, probably without thinking about it for long. And now it is late and there is an empty document in front of you. The cursor blinks. Everything you type sounds either too big or too small. That is not you failing. You are trying to fit someone into five minutes who never fit into five minutes.
Why you shouldn't start at the beginning
The opening line is the hardest part to write and the part you need least. Skip it for now.
Write down the things you already know by heart instead. The story that came out every Christmas. The way he answered the phone. How she always cooked too much, just in case. The keys that were forever lost and forever in the same place. Once those pieces are on the page, the opening writes itself — and it is usually something as ordinary as: "I'm Katie. I'm Margaret's youngest."
Seven small questions that give you the words
If you don't know what to write, don't ask yourself a big question. "Who was she?" gives you nothing. Small questions do. Pick two or three of these and write for five minutes without stopping and without correcting anything.
- When did you first meet him, and what did you notice? If you weren't there — a child writing about a parent, say — the story usually still exists somewhere in the family.
- What did she say so often that all of you could do the impression? One line like that does more in a room than three paragraphs about her character.
- Where was he at his best? In the garden, at the stove, on the phone with someone who was having a bad week.
- What could she do that nobody else could? Small is allowed. Her apple pie. Letting a silence sit without it turning awkward.
- Which moment between the two of you would disappear if you didn't tell it? This is almost always the part that makes the room go quiet.
- What made you laugh when you really weren't supposed to?
- What did you learn from him without him ever knowing he taught you?
You don't need all seven. Two good answers are enough for an entire eulogy. If you want more of them to work from, there is a longer list in our questions to remember someone by.
Ask a few other people for one memory each
You don't have to come up with this on your own. Send a short message to three or four people who knew her well and ask one question: "What is the first thing you see when you think of her?"
You will almost always get back something you didn't have. A colleague who tells you about the lunch breaks. A neighbor who mentions the car that was always parked half on the curb. You are welcome to use those in the eulogy, with the name attached: "Her colleague Dave emailed me yesterday to say…" It widens the picture beyond your own corner of her life, and it saves you an evening of staring at the wall.
How long should a eulogy be?
Three to five minutes is normal. Read aloud, that works out at roughly 450 to 700 words, which sounds like nothing. It is enough for two stories and one sentence spoken directly to him or her.
Check with the funeral director or whoever is leading the service, though. Sometimes there is more room, sometimes less, and it is easier to know that before you start cutting.
A structure that holds up when you're nervous
- One line about who you are. Name and relationship, nothing more. Not everyone in the room knows you.
- Two stories, not seven. Concrete ones, with a place and a time in them. Stories stay with people; lists of adjectives don't.
- Something only you know. This is the reason you are standing there and not somebody else.
- One sentence said to him or her. Not to the room. That is almost always the natural ending, and you tend to recognize it the moment you write it.
Read it out loud, more than once
On paper a text always looks shorter than it is, and you only hear where you stumble when you say it. A few practical things that make the day itself easier:
- Print it in a large font with double spacing, and leave the back of each page blank.
- Number the pages and don't fold them. Keep them loose in a folder — folded paper wants to close itself in your hands.
- Mark the places where you breathe. You will speak faster than you think.
- Read it aloud once to someone you trust. Not for feedback. Just to hear how it sounds when someone is listening.
- Put a glass of water where you'll be standing.
- Give a copy to someone who can take over if you can't finish. Simply having handed that copy over makes the whole thing lighter.
What you don't have to do
You don't have to be funny. You don't have to find a poem that says everything at once. You don't have to read out a life story with dates in it — that is usually on the order of service already.
And you don't have to straighten out whatever was crooked between you. You also don't have to pretend it was straight. One honest sentence about a complicated father lands better in a room than ten beautiful sentences about a father he wasn't. People hear the difference, every time.
If you stop halfway through, that isn't failure. Everyone in that room knows exactly why you are standing there. If the words won't come at all right now, what to write when there are no words may be a gentler place to start.
When you write far more than five minutes will hold
This happens to nearly everyone. You start with seven questions and after two evenings you have ten pages, one of which gets read at the funeral. The rest stays behind on loose sheets, in a notes app, on the back of an envelope.
Those stories are not worth less because they didn't make the service. They just need something other than a microphone. Some people keep the pages in a folder with the cards. Others copy them out over the following weeks into a memory journal with eighty prompts of exactly this kind already waiting, so it all stays in one place instead of disappearing into a drawer.
Which you choose matters less than that it is kept somewhere, because this is precisely the kind of writing you will be glad still exists in five years. There are more ways to hold on to it in how to keep a loved one's memory alive.
Frequently asked questions
Is it okay to read a eulogy from paper?
Yes, and almost everyone does. Nobody expects you to know it by heart, and reading it doesn't make it sound less sincere. The paper is the thing that gets you to the sentences you actually wanted to say.
What do you do if you can't carry on while you're speaking?
Stopping is allowed. Take a sip of water, look down at your page and pick up the sentence where you left it — the room will simply wait. Arrange beforehand for someone to come and stand beside you or take over the reading, so you don't have to decide anything in the moment.
Is it okay to laugh during a eulogy?
Yes. If someone told the worst jokes in the family for forty years, that belongs in there. A room that laughs briefly and then goes quiet has heard your story.
Can someone else read the eulogy for you?
Of course, and it happens more often than you'd think. You write it yourself and ask a brother, a friend or the person leading the service to speak it. The words stay yours, even if your voice can't carry them that day.
How do you start a eulogy if you only knew the person a short time?
Say so, in the first line. Who you are and how long you knew him. Then tell the one thing you saw of him in that short time — for the people who knew him their whole lives, a newer pair of eyes is often the most valuable part of the service.