How to write a eulogy

You have been asked to do this at the worst possible time, probably within a week, and you are not writing at your best. That is expected, and it is not what the room is judging. A eulogy does not have to be beautiful. It has to be true, and it has to be short enough that you can get through it.

Three to five minutes. Around 500 to 700 words.

Before you write anything

Ring two or three people who knew them and ask one question: what do you remember? You will get things you had forgotten and things you never knew, and one of them will become the centre of the speech. This takes twenty minutes and it is the single most useful thing you can do.

Write down everything you can think of without ordering it — habits, phrases they used, what they were like in a queue, the thing they always said. Most of it will not be used. You are looking for the two or three details that are unmistakably them.

The shape

Who you are to them. One line. "I'm his daughter." "Grace was my sister-in-law for thirty-one years."

A specific opening. A phrase they always used, a thing they always did, an image. Something the room recognises immediately. This is where people stop bracing and start listening.

Who they were. Not a CV. Two or three qualities, each one shown by something that actually happened. "She was generous" is nothing. "She kept a drawer of birthday cards so nobody ever went unmarked" is the whole person.

One story, told properly. Slowly, with detail. This is the heart of it. Let it be funny if it was funny — people badly want permission to laugh at a funeral, and giving it to them is a kindness.

What they leave. What is different because they were here. Not everyone changes the world; almost everyone changes a few people, and that is what to say.

A close. Short. Direct. Addressed to them if you want to.

Honesty

Nobody is only good, and a eulogy that describes a saint does not sound like love — it sounds like a stranger. The difficult ones are hard: someone who was sharp with people, who was absent, who was ill for a long time and not always kind in it.

You do not have to pretend. You also do not have to litigate it at a funeral. The usual solution is to name the difficulty gently and move to what was underneath or alongside it: "He was not an easy man, and he would be the first to say so. He was also the only person who ever turned up when it mattered." The room knows. Being the person who spoke honestly about them is a form of respect that flattery is not.

Getting through it

• Print it large, on card, double-spaced. You will need it more than you expect.
• Read it aloud beforehand, at least twice, all the way through. Cry then. It genuinely helps, and it tells you which sentence is the dangerous one.
• Mark the dangerous sentence. Slow down before it, do not speed up through it.
• If you break down, stop and breathe. Nobody minds. Nobody has ever minded. The room is entirely with you.
• Ask someone to be your backup. Give them a copy. Knowing that someone can finish it removes half the fear, and you will almost certainly not need them.
• Water within reach.

Common mistakes

A chronological list of dates and jobs. Speaking mainly about your own grief rather than about them. Going over five minutes. Long quotations and poems in place of your own words — one short one is plenty. Inside references that exclude most of the room. A tone so elevated it stops sounding like you.

If you cannot do it

Say so, early. Ask someone to read it for you. A eulogy read by a friend on your behalf, with a line at the start explaining why, is completely normal and nobody thinks less of anyone. Writing it is the part only you can do.