How to start a eulogy

Two things, and only two. First, the room needs to know who you are — in a church of a hundred and forty people, a good number will not know your face or how you fit. Second, they need a reason to listen, which means arriving quickly at something specific and true.

That is all. It is not an introduction to the funeral, it is not a summary of the person’s life, and it does not need a preamble. Thirty seconds, roughly forty to sixty words, and you are into the body.

Change the names and the details. The value is in the shape of the sentence, not the words.

For a parent

• My mother had exactly one rule about the kitchen, and it was not negotiable.
• There are two hundred photographs of my dad and he is scowling in every single one.
• My mum was not a patient woman, except with children and animals, and she was infinitely patient with those.
• I called my father every Sunday at six for nineteen years. Last Sunday I picked up my phone at five to.

For a grandparent

• My grandad had a shed, and admission was by invitation only.
• Nana was ninety-one and still had opinions about who was driving too fast down her road.
• The first thing my grandmother ever said to my husband was, “Well, you’re very tall.” She meant it as a criticism.

For a partner or spouse

• We had thirty-four years, and I would like to tell you about an ordinary Tuesday in the middle of them.
• People kept telling me we were very different. We were. That was rather the point.
• She proposed to me, which she never let me forget, and which I never wanted to.

For a friend

• I met Danny because he sat down at my table, uninvited, and told me I was eating my sandwich wrong.
• There is a group chat with eleven people in it and none of us have known what to type since Tuesday.
• Sam was my friend for twenty-six years and never once arrived anywhere on time.

For a sibling

• My sister was eighteen months older than me and she never once let me forget it.
• We shared a room until I was fourteen, which is the only reason I know anything true about him.
• I have been the younger brother my whole life. I do not really know how to be anything else.

1. “We are gathered here today…” Everyone knows why they are there. It costs you the most valuable seconds you have and it signals that what follows will be generic.
2. A dictionary definition. “The dictionary defines a mother as…” It puts a reference book between the room and a person they loved.
3. An apology for your own speaking. “I’m not much of a public speaker, so bear with me.” Nobody is judging you and it makes the room anxious on your behalf. Naming grief is different and it is fine — naming stage fright is not necessary.
4. A long quotation or poem. Somebody else’s words, in the one moment the room most wants yours. Save it for the close if you want it at all.

The opening is the hardest part to deliver, not to write. A few things genuinely help.

• Make the first sentence short. Five or six words if you can. You need one easy win before the difficult sentences arrive.
• Breathe out before you start, not in. Get to the lectern, put your pages down, breathe all the way out, then begin. Everyone will wait.
• Do not look at the coffin, or at their partner. Pick a face near the back and speak to that person for the first paragraph.
• Have the first line in large type at the top of the page. If your eyes are not working properly, and they may not be, you want that sentence findable.

Openings, not templates. Each of these is doing one specific job, and the right one depends on what the room already knows when you stand up.

1. The defining quality. “My mother could not throw anything away, and I do not mean that in a charming way.”
2. The characteristic action. “Dad had one joke. Not one kind of joke. One joke.”
3. The thing they always said. “Whenever anything went wrong, my grandmother said the same four words: well, that’s that.”
4. The relationship, stated plainly. “I’m Mark, Pauline’s eldest. I want to talk about my mother’s hands.”
5. The contrast. “Most of you knew Ray as the quiet one at the back. I lived with him for thirty years and I can tell you he was not quiet.”
6. The direct acknowledgement. “None of us expected to be here this month, and I am not going to pretend otherwise before I start.”
7. The last ordinary moment. “The last time I saw my father he was arguing with a self-service checkout.”
8. The correction. “Some of you only met my mother in the last three years, and I want you to know that she was very funny.”
9. The object. “This is her sewing box. The lid does not fit. It has not fitted since about 1990.”
10. The question, used once and answered immediately. “What do you say about someone who taught four hundred children to swim? You start with the ones who were frightened.”

What all ten have in common: they start inside something specific. None of them opens with a definition of grief, a dictionary meaning of the word eulogy, or a quotation — the three openings that tell a room the speech is going to be about death in general rather than about one person.

Write yours last. The opening is much easier to find once the two stories in the middle exist, and almost every good first sentence turns out to be a line lifted from further down.

How to write a eulogy walks through the whole thing in six steps, from a blank page to something you can say out loud. Our guide to ending a eulogy covers eighteen ways to close, and the second-ending problem that spoils most drafts. The funeral speech guide helps if you are not certain which of the five funeral speeches you were asked for. Eulogy examples has six complete eulogies in different voices and lengths. Eulogy quotes has the quotations worth using, and explains why the first line is the worst place for one. Funny eulogy examples shows how to open sincerely before the first laugh, if they were funny.