How to write a eulogy for your aunt
An aunt is often the first adult who treated you like a person. That is unusual and specific, and it is almost always where the eulogy is.
Last updated 18 August 2026
The adult who was on your side
Aunts hold a position nobody else in a family holds. They are family, so they are permanent and unavoidable — but they have no authority over you and no responsibility for how you turn out. That combination produces something specific.
An aunt could tell you the truth about your parents. She could let you do something you were not allowed to do and say nothing. She could take you seriously at fourteen, at an age when nobody else was managing it. She could be outrageous in front of you in a way your mother could not afford to be.
That is your material. Not a list of her qualities — the specific occasion she was on your side when she did not have to be.
Three things worth knowing
Her siblings are the primary mourners. If your parent is burying their sister, that is the deepest grief in the room even though you may be the one speaking. One sentence acknowledging them costs nothing.
If she had no children, do not define her by it. A eulogy that dwells on what she did not have quietly turns a full life into an unfinished one. Describe what she did have — the nieces and nephews, the friendships, the work, the time she had that other people did not.
Cousins knew a different woman. Ask two of them for one memory each and credit them. It widens the portrait and takes twenty seconds.
Two complete examples
For Val Hoskins, given by her nephew
About 420 words · about three minutes
My aunt drove a red Fiat Panda for twenty-three years and it was, by any objective measure, unfit for the road for at least fifteen of them.
The passenger door did not open from the outside. There was a permanent smell that she described as “the sea,” despite the car having been to the sea perhaps twice. The radio worked but could not be turned off, only turned down, so it murmured continuously.
And in that car, between about 1996 and 2003, my aunt Val conducted most of my adolescence.
She would collect me from things. That was her role, self-appointed — she was the one who would come out at eleven at night without telling my mother. And in that car I was told, at various points and in a completely level voice: that my father was doing his best and was not very good at it; that the girl was not going to change her mind; that I was being an idiot about my exams and would regret it, which I did.
She never softened anything and she never once told my parents any of it.
That is an extraordinary thing to give a fifteen-year-old. An adult who tells you the truth and does not report back.
Val did not have children of her own. I want to be careful here, because she would be irritated by any suggestion that this was a sadness — she was extremely clear about it, and mentioned more than once that she had seen what we were like and considered herself fortunate.
What she had was time, and she spent an enormous amount of it on other people’s children. There are four of us here today who were driven around in that terrible car.
To Mum and Uncle Ray — she was your sister first and I know that.
The Panda finally went in 2019. She cried. She denied crying.
Thanks for coming out, Val. Every time.
For Tía Marisol, given by her niece
About 360 words · under three minutes
My aunt had a phrase she used about people she disapproved of, and I am going to say it in Spanish because it does not survive translation. “Pobrecito, pero no.”
Roughly: poor thing — but no.
It was a complete judgement in three words. It meant: I see the difficulty, I have sympathy for the difficulty, and I am not going to pretend the person is not a fool. She used it about politicians, two of my boyfriends, and once, memorably, about a priest.
Marisol came here in 1989 and she never entirely joined in. She spoke English perfectly well and preferred not to. She thought the food was an insult and said so for thirty-seven years. She kept the clock in her kitchen on Madrid time, which caused genuine problems.
And she was the one I went to. Every single time.
Because she did not pretend. When my mother was ill in 2018 the whole family was busy being positive at each other, and I went to Tía Marisol’s flat and she said, “It is very bad and it will probably get worse. Eat something.”
It was the first true thing anyone had said to me in three weeks and I have never forgotten it.
She was not a comfortable person. She was not trying to be. She offered you the truth and a plate of food and she considered that sufficient, and honestly, it was.
The clock is still on Madrid time. None of us are touching it.
Tía — pobrecita, pero no. You were never a poor thing. Not for one day.
Before you finish
- Ask a cousin for one memory and credit them by name.
- Check the running order — extended family funerals often have several short tributes. See how long should a eulogy be.
- More shapes to borrow on eulogy structure.
If you need more than this
Eulogy examples has six complete eulogies in different voices and lengths. Our guide to a eulogy for a best friend is about grieving outside the official order of things. How to write a eulogy for your wife starts by saying you do not have to speak, and why plain words carry more than large ones. Our step-by-step guide to writing a eulogy walks through the whole thing in six steps, from a blank page to something you can say out loud.