How to write a eulogy for your uncle
An uncle is family without the authority. No responsibility for how you turned out, no rules to enforce — which is exactly why so many of us have a story about one.
Last updated 27 August 2026
Family without the authority
Uncles occupy an unusual position. Permanent, like a parent — but with no say in your upbringing and no stake in your report card. That combination produces a particular kind of adult.
He could be funny in front of you in a way your father could not afford to be. He could tell you the truth about the family. He could hand you twenty pounds and say nothing about it. He could take you seriously at fifteen because he was not responsible for what you did next.
That is where the eulogy is — not in a list of his qualities, but in the specific afternoon he was on your side.
Three things worth knowing
His siblings are the primary mourners. If your parent is burying their brother, that is the deepest grief in the room, even if you are the one speaking. One sentence acknowledging it costs nothing and means a great deal.
If he was a second father to you, say so — carefully. If he had children of his own, they are burying their dad. Naming what he was to you is right; framing it as though you had equal claim is not. “He was your father and he was something close to it for me” does both jobs.
If he was unreliable, do not pretend otherwise. Plenty of much-loved uncles were better company than they were dependable. A eulogy that quietly acknowledges it and loves him anyway is far more recognisable than one that irons him flat.
Two complete examples
For Des Mulligan, given by his nephew
About 430 words · about three minutes
My uncle Des complained about the same three things for forty years and I could set my watch by all of them.
One: the price of a pint, which had been outrageous since 1986 and got more outrageous annually. Two: the council, as a general concept, unspecified. Three: a man called Halloran, whose offence has never been established by any living member of this family.
We asked. Repeatedly, over decades. He would say, “You know what he did,” and we did not, and he would not elaborate, and Halloran is now also dead so we are never going to find out.
Here is the thing about my uncle’s complaining. It was enormously cheerful. He was not an unhappy man — he was a man who had discovered that a grievance is a conversation you can have with anybody, and he used it as an instrument for talking to people. He complained at bus stops. He complained his way into knowing everyone in three postcodes.
He never complained about anything that was actually wrong. Not once. He had two heart operations and I do not think I heard him mention either.
When my parents split up in 1997 Des started turning up on Saturdays. He did not announce it or discuss it and he certainly never framed it as helping. He simply developed, at the age of fifty-one, an unexplained interest in taking a twelve-year-old to look at cars he had no intention of buying.
He did that for four years. We looked at approximately six hundred cars.
To my mother and Aunty Bren — he was your brother first, and I know what these last weeks have taken.
Des, I have got no idea what Halloran did. I have decided to be furious about it on principle.
The pint is outrageous. You were right about that one.
For Franco Bellini, given by his niece
About 380 words · about three minutes
The last thing my uncle cooked was a ragù, on the Sunday, for eleven people, four of whom had not been invited.
That was normal. Zio Franco cooked for whoever was in the building. He did not plan numbers — he cooked an amount that was structurally unrelated to how many people were expected, and then people arrived, and it worked out, every single time, for fifty years.
He was not a professional. He worked in insurance, which he found boring and mentioned rarely. The kitchen was where he became a different man — louder, extremely bossy, and completely unwilling to explain any quantity to anybody.
My cousin Ilaria asked him to write the ragù down in about 2015. He said he would. He never did. What we have instead is a piece of paper in a drawer which says “tomatoes — the good ones” and then stops.
I used to think that was him being difficult. I have changed my mind this week. I think he did not write it down because it was not a recipe, it was an excuse — the actual point was eleven people at a table on a Sunday, and you cannot write that down.
He was impossible in other ways. He talked over everyone. He held opinions about my career that he shared at volume at family events for a decade.
We are cooking it next Sunday. It is going to be wrong. All of us know it is going to be wrong.
We are going to cook far too much of it anyway, and see who turns up.
Ciao, Zio. Tomatoes — the good ones.
Before you finish
- Ask a cousin for one memory and credit them by name.
- Check the running order — 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 father-in-law is about the man who let you in, and what to do if he never quite did. Writing a eulogy for your son is for a parent, and begins by saying you are not required to do this. 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.