Nobody feels qualified to write a eulogy. You are grieving, the deadline is days away, and the task feels impossibly large: sum up an entire life, in front of everyone who loved them, without falling apart. Here is the reassuring truth — a good eulogy is not a summary of a life. It is a handful of true stories, told with love, in your own voice.
What a eulogy actually needs to do
The room does not need the full biography; most of them lived parts of it. What they need is to hear the person made vivid one more time — the way they laughed, the things they always said, what it felt like to be loved by them. Aim for five to eight minutes when spoken, which is roughly 800 to 1,200 written words. Shorter and heartfelt always beats longer and complete.
Start with memories, not a blank page
Do not open a document and try to write. First, spend twenty minutes answering questions — on paper, into your phone, or out loud with family. These are the ones that unlock stories:
- What is the first story you always tell about them?
- What did they say all the time — a phrase everyone in the family can hear in their voice?
- What did they love doing that told you who they were?
- When did they make you laugh until it hurt?
- What did they teach you — deliberately, or just by how they lived?
- What will you miss at the most ordinary moment of a normal day?
Three or four of your answers will stand out. Those are your eulogy. Everything else is connective tissue.
A structure that works
1. Open with them, not with you
Skip “for those who don’t know me”. Open with the person: a single vivid image or story that puts them in the room. “Dad never once let a waiter leave the table without learning their name” does more in one sentence than a paragraph of biography.
2. Tell your three stories
One at a time, in whatever order feels natural — many people move loosely through time, but it is not required. Let each story make its own point about who they were; you do not need to explain the moral. If a story is funny, let it be funny. Laughter in a eulogy is not disrespect — it is recognition.
3. Say what they meant
After the stories, one honest paragraph: what this person meant to you and to the people in the room. This is the part written for the living. It is allowed to be simple. “She was the safest place any of us ever knew” is a finished sentence.
4. Close with a farewell
End by speaking to them or about them one last time — a thank you, a promise, their own favourite saying handed back to them. Write your final line early; knowing where you are landing makes the whole speech easier to write and to deliver.
On actually delivering it
- Print it in large type, double-spaced. Full sentences, not dot points — under pressure you will want every word there.
- Read it aloud at least twice beforehand. You will find the sentences that are hard to say and can soften them.
- Pausing, crying, breathing — all allowed. No one in the history of eulogies has been judged for needing a moment.
- Appoint a backup. Knowing someone can step in if you cannot continue is precisely what makes it possible to continue.
If you are too close to it
Sometimes the person closest to the deceased is the least able to write or deliver the eulogy, and that is normal. Share the load: gather stories from family, have someone else read your words, or split the speaking between two or three people. A eulogy is a gift to the room, not a test of the writer.
And if you are planning a whole gathering, not just the words, start with our guide to planning a celebration of life.