How to Write a Eulogy That Honors Someone Completely
By Cooper -- CraftedToast.com
Cooper approaches this article with more care than any other he has written. A eulogy is unlike any other speech. The occasion is the most serious one that exists. The person being honored cannot hear it. The people listening are grieving. And the speaker is almost certainly grieving too, while being asked to perform one of the most demanding acts of public communication there is.
It is also, when done well, one of the most meaningful things one person can do for another. A eulogy that truly captures someone -- that makes the people who loved them feel, for a moment, that the person is present in the room -- is a gift that the people who receive it carry for the rest of their lives.
What a Eulogy Is For
A eulogy serves two purposes simultaneously. It honors the person who has died by capturing something true about who they were. And it gives the people who are grieving something to hold onto -- a portrait of the person they can take with them as a memory, a specific image of who that person was rather than the blur that grief sometimes creates.
This dual purpose shapes every decision about what to include. The eulogy is not primarily for the speaker. It is for the community gathered to grieve together.
What to Include
Biographies list accomplishments. Eulogies capture character. The job title, the number of years at a company, the list of achievements -- these things have their place, but they are not what the people in the room are there to remember. They are there to remember the way this person laughed, the way they showed up for people, the particular quality that made knowing them feel like a privilege. Start there.
As with any speech, the story is the heart of the eulogy. A specific memory -- a moment that captures who this person was in a way that anyone who knew them will immediately recognize -- is worth more than pages of description. It doesn't need to be dramatic. Often the quieter memories are the ones that land most powerfully: the particular thing they said, the small gesture they made repeatedly, the way they handled something ordinary in an extraordinary way.
Laughter at a funeral is not disrespect. It is relief, and it is love. A moment in the eulogy that makes people smile -- even laugh -- is almost always welcome, as long as it comes from genuine affection and captures something true about the person. Often the stories that most accurately represent who someone was are also funny. That is a gift to use.
Not possessions -- qualities. The way they made people feel. The things they taught. The habits and phrases and values they passed on. A good eulogy articulates what continues after the person is gone, which gives the people grieving a sense that something of the person they loved persists. This is often what the people listening most need to hear.
How to Deliver It When You're Grieving
The hardest part of a eulogy is not writing it -- it is delivering it while you yourself are in grief. A few things that help:
- Practice it aloud, multiple times, so that the emotional moments are not surprises when you reach them in front of the room. The first time you cry through a section should be in private, not at the podium.
- Have a printed copy with large font and wide margins. If you lose your place because emotion overtakes you, you need to be able to find it again quickly.
- It is fine to pause. The room is with you completely. A moment of composure -- a breath, a pause, a glass of water -- will be met with nothing but patience and understanding.
- It is also fine to cry. A speaker who shows genuine emotion in a eulogy is not failing -- they are showing the room how much the person mattered. No one in that room will think less of you for it.
Cooper's belief: "The most important thing a eulogy can do is make the people in the room feel that the person being remembered was truly known, truly loved, and truly seen. Everything else is secondary to that. Write toward that feeling."