How to Write a Eulogy

The biggest mistake people make when writing a eulogy is sitting down at a blank page and trying to write. Don't. Before you write, you need to remember.

Spend thirty minutes — longer if you have it — writing down everything you can recall about the person. Not the formal biography: the specific, small, vivid things. The way they sat in their chair. The phrase they always used. The story they told at every family gathering that everyone had heard a hundred times. The thing they did when they were nervous.

Write whatever comes. Don't edit yet. You're building a pool of material that you'll draw from when you start to write. The best eulogies almost always come from this step — they're built on specific details that nobody else could have provided.

If you're stuck, try asking yourself: What would I tell someone who had never met them? What would I want them to know? What is the first image that comes to mind when I think of them?

A eulogy for a ninety-year-old grandmother who lived a full and joyful life calls for a different tone than a eulogy for a forty-year-old taken suddenly. A eulogy for someone who was famously funny should probably have humor in it. A eulogy for someone private and reserved might be quieter, more contemplative.

The right tone is the honest one — the one that fits who they were, not what you think a eulogy is supposed to sound like. If your person was direct and no-nonsense, be direct and no-nonsense. If they were warm and demonstrative, let the warmth come through.

Two things to avoid: forced solemnity (a person who made everyone laugh deserves laughter in their eulogy) and forced levity (not every situation calls for a joke, and the audience will feel the inauthenticity).

The most common mistake in eulogies is trying to cover everything. You can't cover a life in five minutes. What you can do is illuminate it — choose two or three specific stories or moments that, together, give a true portrait of who this person was.

A story can be short. It doesn't need to be a full anecdote with a beginning, middle, and end. It can be a single image: 'I always saw her in the garden on Sunday mornings before anyone else was up.' It can be a conversation: 'He told me once that the secret to his marriage was that he always let her be right, which I am certain she never believed for a second.' It can be a quality demonstrated: 'She remembered every birthday of every person she had ever cared about. I mean every birthday.'

These specific moments do more work than any general praise. 'He was a good man' tells us something. 'He stayed at the hospital for three straight days when my mother was sick, and he didn't tell anyone he'd been there until years later' tells us who he was.

The opening of a eulogy is the hardest to write and the most important to get right. Most people start there, which is why most eulogies open weakly — with 'I'm standing here today' or 'My mother was a wonderful woman' or some other sentence that says nothing and loses the room immediately.

Write the body first. Once you have your stories and your ending, the right opening will be clearer. The opening should drop the listener immediately into something real — a specific image, a phrase the person used, a concrete detail that makes them present in the room.

Strong openings: a direct quote from the person. A specific sensory memory. A statement of what you're there to say, plain and direct. A question that pulls the listener in.

The people in that room are not there to hear a biography. They knew the person too, and they can read the obituary. What they cannot get anywhere else is your version — the specific, private, particular things you observed and experienced.

What did you know about them that most people didn't? What version of them did you have access to? What did they tell you that you've never forgotten? What did you understand about them that took years to fully see?

This is the part where the eulogy becomes irreplaceable. Anyone could give a chronological account of this person's life. Only you can give this account — the one that comes from your specific relationship, your specific memory, your specific history with them.

Don't hold back from specificity because you're worried it won't mean something to the whole room. Specific details land universally. The more particular you are, the more people will feel they understand the person you're describing.

The ending of a eulogy is what people carry out of the room. It needs to be simple, true, and direct. Long, elaborate closings undo the emotional weight of everything that came before.

Some options: a direct address to the person ('I love you. I'll carry you with me.'). A statement of what they gave you ('I am who I am in part because of who you were.'). A simple declaration ('She was here. She mattered. She will not be forgotten.'). A line of theirs that captures something essential.

Avoid: summing up everything you've already said. Trying to explain or make meaning of the death. The phrase 'in closing.' The phrase 'he would have wanted us to be happy' (used too often to land). Anything that feels like a wrap-up rather than an ending.

End, and then stop. The silence after a clean ending does more than any additional words could.