How to write a eulogy for your grandmother
Speaking about a grandmother is a slightly different job from speaking about a parent. You are usually not the person who has lost the most in the room, and the woman you knew is only the last third of her.
Last updated 12 July 2026
The sweet-old-lady problem
Grandmothers get flattened in eulogies more than anyone. Baking, cardigans, sweets in a tin, always a warm welcome. It is affectionate and it is often partly true, and it turns a whole woman into a greetings card.
She was young once, for far longer than she was your grandmother. She had a job, or several. She had opinions about politics and about her neighbours and about at least one of her children’s marriages. She was frightened of things. She was probably quite tough — most women of her generation had to be.
The most valuable thing a grandchild can do in a eulogy is give the room the person, not the role. If you only have the last third of her life, borrow the rest: ask your parent, or her sister, or her friend from the choir, for one story from before you existed. It is almost always the moment the room leans in.
Four things that are specifically hard about this one
Your parent is burying their mother
This is the difference that changes everything. You are grieving a grandmother; your mother or father is grieving their mother, and they are sitting in the front row, probably unable to speak, which is frequently why you are doing this.
One sentence acknowledging it is enough and it matters enormously:
I’m speaking today because my mother asked me to, and because she can’t. Mum — I’ll try to do her justice.
Do not overdo it. One line, then go and be specific about your grandmother.
You are one of several grandchildren
Cousins often knew genuinely different women, especially when there is a decade between the eldest and youngest. The first grandchild may have known someone in her fifties, still working, sharper and less patient. The youngest knew someone soft.
Ask each cousin for one specific memory and credit them by name. It takes thirty seconds of the speech and it makes the eulogy belong to all of you.
“She had a good innings”
You will hear this a great deal in the days beforehand, usually kindly meant. Be careful about letting it into the eulogy, because it quietly instructs the room not to be too upset.
Ninety-four years is not a consolation prize. The people who loved her are allowed to be devastated, and a eulogy that says what will actually be missed on a Tuesday afternoon does more than one that marvels at the number.
If she raised you
For some people a grandmother was effectively a parent. If that is you, say so plainly and early — the room may not all know, and it changes how everything you say afterwards is heard.
You are also allowed to grieve her the way you would a mother, which is worth knowing, because people may not offer you that.
Where to find the material
- What was in her handbag, or her kitchen drawer?
- What did she keep that had no use?
- What did she call you?
- What did she say about the neighbours?
- What was she like on the telephone?
- What did she refuse to buy on principle?
- What did she do that your parents disapproved of?
- What did she let you get away with?
- What was she doing at twenty-five? (Ask someone.)
Two complete examples
For Nesta Powell, given by her granddaughter
About 480 words · roughly three and a half minutes
I want to describe my grandmother’s back room, because if you can see the room you have got her.
It was about nine feet square and it contained: a two-bar electric fire that was on from September; a chair nobody else was permitted to sit in; a nest of tables, of which only the top one was ever used; and an enormous framed photograph of a man none of us could identify. We asked. She said, “Oh, him.” That was the entire answer we ever got, across four decades.
There was a biscuit tin with no biscuits in it. There was a radio permanently tuned to a station she complained about daily. And on the windowsill there were eleven small china animals, which she dusted every Friday and which she would tell you, unprompted, she did not actually like.
You were fed within four minutes of arriving in that room whether or not you had eaten. That was not negotiable and it was not discussed.
My mother has asked me to say — and I am quoting her — that Nesta was “not remotely as sweet as the grandchildren think.”
That is true and I think it is the important part. My grandmother was born in 1934, she left school at fourteen, she worked in a laundry and then for twenty-nine years at the hospital, and she raised four children largely on her own after 1971 in a way that nobody has ever fully explained to me. She was not soft. She had a temper that my uncles still lower their voices about.
What she was, was completely dependable. She was in that chair, in that room, with that fire on, and if your life came apart you could go there and she would not ask you anything, and she would feed you within four minutes.
My cousin Dylan told me on Monday that he sat in that room for an entire afternoon in 2016 without either of them saying more than about nine words, and that it is the only reason he got through that year.
The house is being cleared next month. We have argued considerably about the china animals, which is exactly what she would have wanted.
I have got the photograph of the unidentified man. I am going to put it up. I am never going to know who he is.
Thank you, Nan. Say hello to him from us.
For Bibi Farzana Qureshi, given by her grandson
About 420 words · about three minutes
My grandmother was afraid of a great many things, and she did almost all of them anyway.
She was afraid of flying. She flew here in 1974 with two children and one suitcase, having never been on an aeroplane, to a country she had seen only in photographs, to a husband she had not seen for fourteen months.
She was afraid of the telephone for about two years afterwards because of her English, so she wrote everything down first — what she was going to say, and what she thought they would say back — and my aunt has one of these scripts, and it is on both sides of the paper.
She was afraid of driving. She learned at forty-six, failed three times, and passed on the fourth. She then drove, badly and at considerable speed, for thirty-one years.
I think we sometimes talk about brave people as though they are people who do not feel fear. My grandmother was frightened. She said so. She would tell you she was frightened while she was in the process of doing the thing.
And she was not a placid woman about it either — she complained enormously, the entire time, at volume, to anyone available. She once described the M6 as “a personal insult.”
She was demanding. I am going to say that because everyone here knows it. She had views on how often you should visit and she shared them. She asked my sister the same question about marriage for eleven years.
But every single thing my family has, we have because a frightened woman got on a plane in 1974 and complained her way through the next fifty-two years without ever once turning back.
Nani, I have got your driving licence photograph. You look absolutely furious in it.
Thank you for being frightened and going anyway.
Before you finish
- Ask your parent to read it first, if they are able. They may want something in, or out, and they have the greater claim.
- Read it aloud with a timer — see how long should a eulogy be.
- Three more complete examples, including a very short one, are on eulogy examples for a grandmother.
If you need more than this
Our collection of eulogy examples has six complete eulogies in different voices and lengths. Our page on a eulogy for a brother covers sibling grief, which almost nobody will ask you about. How to write a eulogy for your grandfather explains the gap between the grandfather you knew and the father your parent knew. How to write a eulogy walks through the whole thing in six steps, from a blank page to something you can say out loud.