How to write a eulogy

If you only read one thing on this page, read this. Each step is explained in full below.

1. Find out how long you have and who else is speaking. Ask the funeral director, celebrant or officiant how many minutes you have and whether anyone else is speaking. Most eulogies run three to five minutes. Knowing this before you write saves you from cutting something you love later.
2. Collect memories before you try to write sentences. Write a list of small, specific things: what they said, what they cooked, what they were doing the last ordinary time you saw them. Do not judge them or shape them yet. Aim for twenty fragments.
3. Choose two or three memories that show the same person. Pick the fragments that all point at one truth about them. Two or three specific stories will do more than ten general compliments.
4. Write a first draft without stopping. Open with their name and your bond. Tell the memories. Say what they leave behind. Say goodbye. Do not edit while you write — a bad first draft is still a draft.
5. Read it aloud with a timer. Read it out loud, standing up, at the pace you would actually speak. Roughly 140 words a minute is realistic when you are upset. Cut anything you stumble over twice.
6. Print it large and give a copy to someone. Print in 16 to 18 point on single-sided pages, numbered. Hand a second copy to a person sitting near the front who could finish it for you if you cannot.

Before you write a word, find out three things. They take one phone call and they will save you from writing the wrong thing.

1. How long do I have? Ask the funeral director, celebrant or officiant. Three to five minutes is the usual answer.
2. Is anyone else speaking? If there are three speakers, you do not have to cover their whole life. You only have to cover your part of it.
3. What kind of service is it? A religious service, a humanist funeral and a celebration of life at a pub all take slightly different registers.

Everything after this is easier once you know those three answers.

Most people sit down to write and find that they cannot remember anything. That is normal, and it is not a sign that you loved them less. Grief flattens memory for a while. The way through it is to stop trying to think of Something Meaningful and answer small, factual questions instead.

Set a timer for fifteen minutes and answer as many of these as you can, in fragments. Do not write sentences. Do not judge what comes out.

• What did they always say? Their phrase, the one you can hear.
• What did their house or car smell like?
• What did they cook, or refuse to cook?
• What were they doing the last ordinary time you saw them?
• What did they complain about, happily, for years?
• What were they wearing, most days?
• What did they do that embarrassed you as a teenager?
• Who did they look after, quietly, without mentioning it?
• What did they teach you without ever sitting you down?
• What made them laugh so hard they could not speak?

You are looking for around twenty fragments. Most of them will not make it in. That is the point — you need more than you will use, so you can choose rather than scrape.

Almost every eulogy that lands follows the same four movements. It is not a formula so much as the order in which people can absorb what you are telling them.

1. Open with their name and your bond. Twenty or thirty seconds. Who they were to you, and one sentence that sounds like them. Do not open with “we are gathered here today” — everyone already knows why they are there.
2. Tell two or three specific memories. This is the body and it should be most of your time. Not a list of virtues: actual moments, with a place and a detail in them.
3. Say what they leave behind. What changed in you because of them. What people will keep doing because they did it first.
4. Say goodbye. Three or four sentences. Speak to them directly if you want to.

One test for the middle section: if a sentence could be said about almost anyone’s mother, cut it or replace it with the thing only yours did.

Set a timer for forty minutes and write the whole thing start to finish without going back to fix anything. Leave the clumsy sentences in. Leave the gaps. Type [something about the garden here] and keep going.

The reason is simple: editing and writing use different parts of your attention, and grief has already taken most of it. If you try to do both at once you will spend two hours on the first paragraph and give up. A finished bad draft can be fixed in twenty minutes. A perfect first paragraph cannot be turned into a eulogy.

Here is a complete eulogy of the kind an adult child might give for a parent. Read it once for the feel of it, then read the notes underneath.

Almost no guide will say this, so here it is plainly: sometimes you are asked to speak about someone who hurt you. A parent who was absent or cold or worse. A sibling you had not spoken to in six years. Someone you loved and could not be around.

You have three honest options, and all three are legitimate.

1. Say no. You are allowed. “I don’t think I can do it justice, but I’ll be there” is a complete sentence and nobody is owed more than that.
2. Speak narrowly and truthfully. You do not have to summarise the whole relationship. Choose one true, good thing and stay inside it. “My father and I did not always find each other easy. But he taught me to swim, and he was endlessly patient in the water, and I have never forgotten it” is honest, it is kind, and it does not require you to lie.
3. Speak for the room rather than for yourself. Gather three memories from other people and deliver those. You are the voice, not the source. This is a real and dignified way to do it when your own feelings are too complicated to put in front of a hundred people.

What to avoid is the fourth option — writing a warm, glowing tribute you do not mean. People can hear it, it will cost you something to say, and you may resent it for years. Understatement is always available. Saying less is not dishonest.

The writing is most of the work but the delivery is where people panic, and it is almost entirely solved by preparation the day before.

• Print it. Do not read from a phone. Screens dim, lock, and shake visibly in a hand that is trembling. Paper does not.
• 16 to 18 point, one and a half spaced, single sided. Number the pages. If you drop them, you can reassemble them. Do not staple — you will need to slide pages sideways, not turn them.
• Mark your breaths. Put a slash where you want to pause. Most people read far too fast when frightened; the marks give you permission to stop.
• Give a second copy to someone. Choose a person sitting near the front, hand it to them before the service, and say: “if I can’t finish, will you take over from where I stop?” This one sentence removes most of the fear, because the worst outcome is now covered.
• Find one face. Pick a person near the back and speak to them. It is much easier than addressing a room.

This is the thing people are most afraid of and the thing almost nothing written about eulogies addresses. So, concretely:

You will probably cry, and it does not matter. You are at a funeral. Crying at a funeral is not a failure of composure, it is the correct response to the situation, and the room is entirely on your side. Nobody has ever left a funeral thinking badly of someone who wept.

If your voice goes, in order:

1. Stop. Put both hands flat on the lectern. Do not try to push through — pushing through is what makes it worse.
2. Breathe out slowly, all the way, twice. Crying tightens the in-breath; it is the out-breath that settles you.
3. Take a drink of water if there is one. Ask for a moment out loud if you want. “Give me a second” is fine to say.
4. Start again from the beginning of the paragraph, not from where you stopped. It gives you a run-up.
5. If you genuinely cannot continue, look at the person holding your second copy. That is what it is for. Handing it over is not quitting; it is the plan working.

Two small things that help more than you would expect: keep the first sentence short so you have a win straight away, and do not have a photo of them in your eyeline while you speak.

How long should a eulogy be works out the words-to-minutes arithmetic and what to cut first. How to start a eulogy collects sixteen opening lines and the four openings to avoid. How to end a eulogy covers eighteen ways to close, and the second-ending problem that spoils most drafts. How to write a funeral speech 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 templates gives you four fill-in templates, each shown blank and then completed. The eulogy writer turns a few memories into a personal draft in minutes, and is free to start. Eulogy by relationship has guidance specific to whoever you are speaking for. Our condolence messages cover the other writing that lands in the same week: the card, the text and the note to a colleague.