What a eulogy is
A eulogy is the spoken remembrance at the heart of the service — a few minutes in which one person stands and tells everyone who this was. It is different from the obituary, which is written to be published and read; a eulogy is written to be spoken, in a particular room, to people who loved the same person you did.
That difference is freeing. A eulogy does not have to be complete, or balanced, or a full account of a life. It only has to be true. You are not the historian of their whole life — you are a witness to your part of it, and your part is enough.
What makes a eulogy good
- Stories, not adjectives. "She was generous" fades from the air as it is said; the story of the winter she drove her neighbour to every appointment stays with everyone in the room. Choose the stories first and let them do the describing.
- Your own voice. Write the way you speak, to these people, about this person. If you are funny together as a family, warmth and laughter belong — a room remembering a life it loved is allowed to smile.
- Particulars over summaries. The song always on in the kitchen, the exact phrase they said at every departure, the way they answered the phone — small true details are what people carry home.
A shape that works
Most eulogies settle comfortably into five parts:
- Begin with who you are — one sentence: your name and what they were to you. Everyone relaxes once they know whose eyes they are seeing this life through.
- Say who they were, plainly — a few sentences of the essentials: where their life was lived, and the two or three things that mattered most to them.
- Tell two or three stories — this is the heart, and most of your minutes. Each story should show one of the qualities you would otherwise have listed.
- Say what they gave — what the people in the room learned from them, or carry because of them.
- Close with a line you can steady yourself on — short, and written down word for word, so the ending is already there when you reach it.
Five minutes is a generous length — about seven or eight hundred words, spoken slowly. Shorter is always fine. If two of you are speaking, agree on the stories beforehand so each has its own teller.
Words you can borrow
If the first line is the hardest, any of these can open it:
"For those I haven't met, my name is [your name] — [name] was my mother, and this is a little of what I want you to know about her."
"There is no way to fit [name] into a few minutes, so I won't try. I'll just tell you three stories, and let him introduce himself."
And for the close:
"We were lucky to have her, and we knew it while we had her. Thank you for loving her with us."
"If you want to honor him, do it the way he would have — [the thing they always did]. He would like that better than anything said today."
Reading it on the day
- Write it out in full. The day is not the day to improvise. A full text, in large type and double-spaced with numbered pages, holds you even if your voice does not.
- Read it aloud twice beforehand — once to an empty room, once to one person. You will find the sentences that need to be shorter, and you will know the road ahead of you.
- Go slowly, and let pauses stand. A pause feels long only to the speaker; to the room, it is simply part of the remembering. Keep water within reach.
- Name a second reader. Give a copy to someone who will quietly finish it for you if the moment becomes too much. Knowing they are there is usually what makes them unnecessary.
When you are ready
The eulogy takes its place in the order of events, usually near the middle of the service — our guide to planning an order of service shows where it sits, and the program wording guide has the line that introduces it. Solace Paper makes order of service programs — templates you can edit yourself, and programs we prepare for you, checked letter by letter. The collection opens soon at our Etsy shop.