How to write a eulogy for a friend
A friend's eulogy has a different audience from a family member's. You are standing in front of people who knew a son, a father, a sister — and you are about to introduce them to someone slightly different.
Last updated 9 August 2026
You are speaking to their family
This is the whole difference. When a daughter speaks, the family are grieving alongside her. When you speak, the family are watching a stranger — or nearly one — describe their person.
That is not a warning. It is the opportunity. Parents in particular are often desperate to know who their child was out in the world, and a friend is the only person who can tell them. What was he like at work? Who did she look after? What was he like at two in the morning on a bad night?
Address them directly at least once. A single sentence turned towards the front row — “To his mum and dad: I want you to know what he was like on a Tuesday” — is frequently the most valuable thirty seconds of the service.
What to leave out
Friends know things families do not, and a funeral is the wrong place for almost all of them. Before you write, sort your material into what you can say and what you cannot.
- Old relationships. Especially if a current partner is in the room.
- Anything about drink, drugs, money or health that was not already family knowledge.
- Things they told you in confidence. Death does not release you from that.
- Stories where the point is that you got away with something. Funny in a pub, wrong in a crematorium.
- Anything that reveals a rift in the family. You may know why they had not spoken for two years. It is not yours to say.
The test: run any story you are unsure about past one family member beforehand. It takes one message and it protects everyone, including you.
Two complete examples
For Hamish Doull, given by his friend of thirty years
About 440 words · roughly three and a half minutes
Almost everyone I love, I met through Hamish.
I want to start there because I think it is the actual fact of him, and I only worked it out on Thursday when I was counting up who to ring.
My wife — I met her at a party at his flat in 1999 that he made me go to when I did not want to. My business partner — Hamish sat us next to each other at a dinner and then told each of us separately that the other one was interesting, which was a lie in at least one direction. The bloke who has been my closest friend for fifteen years was somebody Hamish worked with and decided I should know.
He did this constantly. He was an appalling gossip and a compulsive introducer, and he could not be in a room with two people who did not know each other without doing something about it.
Look around this room. This is not a room of people who all knew Hamish. About a third of you know each other because of him. There are marriages in here he caused. There is at least one company.
To Fiona and to his parents — I want to say something you may not have seen, because he was different with us. He was ridiculous. He was properly, deliberately ridiculous, he did voices, and he had a long-running and entirely fabricated feud with a man in his office named Colin who I do not believe ever knew about it.
He was also completely useless in a crisis, which I feel I should say for accuracy. If your life fell apart Hamish would arrive, at speed, with the wrong thing, and be no practical help whatsoever, and stay until three in the morning.
He never once asked whether he should come. He just came.
We are going to have to introduce ourselves to each other from now on, which none of us know how to do, because for thirty years he did it for us.
Thanks, Hamish. For all of them.
For Aiko Tanaka, given by her friend
About 380 words · about three minutes
I am going to try to describe my friend’s laugh, and I am probably going to fail, but everyone who knew Aiko is currently hearing it, so I only have to get close.
It arrived in two parts. There was a silent bit first — a full second where nothing happened at all and her face did something complicated — and then a noise that was genuinely too loud for her body, which she was embarrassed about for the entire time I knew her.
She used to put her hand over her mouth. It never worked. She once did it in a cinema and a man two rows in front turned round, and she apologised to him, and then laughed at having apologised, which was considerably worse.
I met her at work in 2011 and I was very lonely at the time, and I have never told her that. Aiko was the person who asked me to lunch, in my second week, when nobody else had, and then just kept asking, for eleven years.
To her mother and her sister — she talked about you constantly. She rang home on the walk between the station and the office every single morning, and I know that because I was frequently walking next to her and being ignored.
She was not perfect. She was chronically incapable of saying no to anything, which meant she was over-committed and slightly panicking for about a decade, and she would agree to things while pulling a face that made it obvious she did not want to.
But she asked me to lunch. That is the whole thing. She noticed somebody on their own and she did something about it, and she did it over and over for the rest of her life, for a lot of people in this room.
I can still hear it. The silent second, then the noise, then the hand.
Thank you for asking, Aiko.
Before you finish
- Run any uncertain story past one family member. One message.
- Check the running order — friends often speak alongside family, so find out who is covering what.
- Read it aloud with a timer — see how long should a eulogy be. More examples on eulogy examples.
If you need more than this
Our collection of eulogy examples has six complete eulogies in different voices and lengths. The father-and-daughter page is written for a daughter speaking about her father. How to write a eulogy for your aunt is about the adult who was on your side without having to be. How to write a eulogy walks through the whole thing in six steps, from a blank page to something you can say out loud.