How to write a eulogy when you're not a writer

Nobody is a eulogy writer. Everyone who has ever given one was doing it for the first time, in the worst week of their life, for a deadline they did not choose.

You do not need to be good at writing. You need a method, because the thing that defeats people is the blank page rather than the words.

Start by collecting, not writing

Do not open a document and try to compose. Open a note on your phone and spend two days adding fragments as they come: things he said, a job he had, an argument he always won, what the house smelled like on a Sunday.

Text four people and ask each of them one small question. "What is the first thing you picture when you think of Dad?" You will get material in an hour that you could not have produced in a week of staring.

By day three you will have thirty fragments. Writing then becomes choosing, which is a much easier job.

A shape that holds

Four minutes is about 550 words. That is far less than people expect, and it is the right length. This shape works for almost anyone:

• ● Who you are and what he was to you. One sentence.
• ● One specific story, told properly, with a place and a time in it. This is the heart of it.
• ● What that story tells you about him, said plainly.
• ● The ordinary things: what he did, what he loved, who he leaves.
• ● One line to end on. Something you would actually say.

The single story is doing most of the work. A eulogy that lists qualities gives the room a summary. A eulogy that describes twenty minutes in a car park in 1998 gives them the man.

Write it the way you speak

Read each sentence out loud. If you would not say it in a kitchen, cut it. "He possessed an unwavering generosity of spirit" becomes "He would give you anything, and he never made you feel it."

Contractions are your friend. Short sentences are your friend. The register you are aiming for is a person talking about someone they loved, not a citation.

Say the true things, including the difficult ones

A eulogy that describes a saint does not sound like love, it sounds like a press release. Rooms relax when someone says the honest thing.

"He was hard work sometimes. He would have argued with the vicar about the hymn." That gets a laugh, and the laugh is relief, because everybody there knows it and had assumed nobody was going to say it.

There is a line, and it sits where the truth stops being affectionate. Stubborn, yes. Late for everything, yes. The affair, no. You are not there to settle anything.

On crying

You probably will, and it is not a failure. The room is not assessing your composure; most of them are relieved it is not them up there.

Some things that help: print it in 16 point, double spaced, on paper rather than a phone that will dim. Mark two places to pause and breathe. Have a glass of water on the lectern. Ask someone to sit in the second row who can take over if you cannot continue, and tell them in advance so they are not blindsided.

If you stop, stop. Nobody in that room is impatient. Look at the paper, breathe, carry on. It will feel like a minute; it will be nine seconds.

Practise out loud three times

Not in your head. Out loud, standing, at full volume. You will find the sentence you cannot get through, and you can then decide whether to cut it or to accept that you are going to cry at that point and plan for it.

Time yourself while you do it. Most people read faster than they think, then panic and speed up. If it runs long, cut a whole section rather than trimming words everywhere.

Afterwards

Give a copy to the family, and put it somewhere it will not be lost. The eulogy is often the only time anyone attempts a full account of a life, and it is regularly the single most valuable document a family ends up with.

It is also, in our experience, the piece that gets read most often when families gather what people remember: it is the spine that the smaller memories hang from.

Kitty — Kitty writes and edits the Carn journal.