Eulogy Examples and How to Write One

A eulogy is not an obituary read aloud. The obituary is a record; the eulogy is a person standing up and saying what someone meant. It can be four minutes. It should be true, it should have one story in it, and it should be written down, because nobody remembers what they meant to say at a funeral.

The shape almost every good eulogy has

1. Who you are to them. One sentence. "I'm Anne, Margaret's eldest."
2. One story. Not a list of qualities; a thing that happened, with them in it, that shows the quality. The story does the work.
3. What it meant. Two or three sentences that say what the story shows and what it left you.
4. A goodbye. Direct, short, to them or to the room.

Four to six minutes spoken is about 600 to 900 words. Longer than that and the room starts to shift, whatever the words are.

A eulogy for a mother (about 550 words)

I'm Anne. I'm the eldest, which in our house meant I was the one who got sent to find out whether Mom was actually angry or just loud.

I want to tell you about one afternoon. I was fourteen and I had been cut from the school play, and I came home certain that my life was over. Mom was in the garden. She did not stop weeding. She said, "Get the other trowel." So I got the other trowel, and we weeded the whole bed in silence, and when we were done she stood up, looked at it, and said, "There. That's something that's better than it was an hour ago." Then she went in and made dinner.

That was Mom's whole philosophy, and she never once said it out loud. When something hurt, you found something you could fix, and you fixed it, and then you had dinner. She fixed second-graders for thirty-one years. She fixed the church choir every Thursday. She fixed our dad, honestly, more than once. And she fixed a great many of you, I suspect, with a plate at the door and a refusal to hear about how you were fine.

She was not sentimental. She would be irritated by this. But she was the most reliable person I have ever known, and I have come to think that reliability is what love looks like when it has been going on for a long time.

Mom, the bed is weeded. We'll have dinner now. Thank you for everything.

A eulogy for a grandfather (about 450 words)

Grandpa Walt taught me to drive in the GE parking lot on a Sunday, in a car with a clutch, and the only thing he said for the whole hour was "again." Not "good," not "you've got it." "Again." I stalled it maybe forty times. On the forty-first, it went. He nodded once and said, "Now you can drive." And I could.

I did not understand him until I was much older. I thought he was hard. He was not hard; he was careful. He had spent thirty-eight years around machines that would take your hand off if you were careless, and he had decided that the people he loved would be careful too, and that this was more important than whether they liked him in the moment.

He rebuilt every car my dad ever owned. He drove to Pittsburgh twice a month for eleven years to sit with his mother. He stood in the rain at my games and never once told me to hustle. He did not say much, and I have been trying, this week, to remember what he did say, and it comes down to two things: "Measure it again," and "Again."

I think that was love. I think for a man like him, it was the whole of it. Grandpa, I'll measure it again. Rest now.

A eulogy for a friend (about 400 words)

I met Jen on the first day of nursing school, when she asked to borrow a pen and then kept it for twenty years. I found it in her bag last week. She had written my name on it.

You all know she was a good nurse. I want to tell you she was a better friend. When my marriage ended she showed up with a casserole and a spreadsheet, and she did not leave until I had a lawyer and a plan. When her diagnosis came she called me and said, "Okay, so, we're going to need a spreadsheet." And we made one. And she worked it, line by line, for two years, and the last line was the letters for Owen and Maya, and she finished them in June.

She asked me to say one thing today, so I'll say it exactly. She said: "Tell them I wasn't brave. Tell them I was just busy." That was Jen. She did not have time to be afraid.

Jen, I have your pen. I am keeping it. I love you.

Getting through it

• Print it in large type, double-spaced, with a slash where you plan to breathe. You will not remember to breathe otherwise.
• Read it aloud twice at home, the second time to someone. The places where you break are the places where you will break in the church. Knowing where they are helps.
• If your voice goes, stop. Look down at the page, count to five, and go on. The room will wait. Nobody has ever thought less of a eulogy for a pause.
• Have a backup reader. Ask someone in advance to finish it if you cannot. Hand them a copy. Knowing they are there is often enough to mean you never need them.
• Do not apologise for crying, for the length, or for not being a writer. Just say the next sentence.