How to Write a Eulogy When You Don't Know Where to Start

You've been asked to speak on Saturday. Or maybe it was assumed you would, and you didn't know how to say no. Either way, it's Thursday, you're grieving, and you have a blank document open in front of you.

There is no single right way to do this. A eulogy doesn't need to cover a whole life. It doesn't need to be the best thing anyone has ever heard. It needs to be honest, and it needs to be specific - and if you can manage those two things, you will have done something real.

Before anything else: a eulogy that works is usually three to five minutes long, which is roughly 400 to 700 words spoken aloud at a human pace. Not a lecture. Not a life summary. One person, remembered well, by someone who knew them.

A good eulogy is one story, told well

A woman once stood up at her father's funeral and talked, for four minutes, about the way he made sandwiches. How he always cut them diagonally, never straight across. How he wrapped them in a specific fold of tin foil. How, when she was seven and sick at home, he brought one to her in bed without being asked. The room was completely still.

She didn't summarize his career. She didn't list his virtues. She told one story, and everyone in that room understood who he was.

That's what "one story, told well" means. You're not writing a biography. You're not producing a highlight reel. You're choosing one moment, one quality, one way this person showed up in the world - and you're letting that carry the weight of everything you can't say.

"Told well" doesn't mean polished or performed. It means spoken aloud, slowly, with room to breathe. Reading from notes is completely fine. Memorizing is not required. Your voice and your presence will do more work than any perfectly constructed sentence.

If right now you only have fragments - a feeling, a few images, something you're not sure counts as a story - that's enough to start with. A fragment can become a story in the telling.

A simple shape that works

If you want a skeleton to hang your words on, here it is:

• Open with one specific memory - a moment, an image, a thing they said.

• Explain what that moment shows about who they were.

• Add one thing only you (or a small number of people) know about them.

• Say what you want to say directly - to them, to the room, or both.

• Close simply - one sentence that brings people back to today.

That's it. Five parts, 400 to 700 words, three to five minutes. It works in a church, a funeral home, a garden, and a community hall. It works for a religious service and a secular one. It works even when the relationship was complicated.

Start by asking yourself what you actually remember

Don't begin with "What was she like?" That question is too wide. Start with something smaller and more physical: When did I last see her? What was she wearing? What did she say when she walked in the door?

Sensory details unlock stories. The question your head can't answer, your body often can.

A daughter once described her mother's specific way of folding a kitchen towel - brisk, precise, slightly impatient, always in thirds. It was a tiny thing. But in the telling, it revealed exactly who her mother was: someone who cared deeply about doing things right, who had no time for fussing, who showed love through action rather than words. One folded towel, and the whole person appeared.

Don't dismiss a memory because it seems too small or too ordinary. The ordinary ones are often the truest.

Include a detail only you know

The most powerful part of any eulogy is the thing the room has never heard before. A private habit. A phrase they always used. Something that happened between just the two of you.

It doesn't have to be dramatic. One person spoke about how the friend she was eulogising always texted the single letter "k" instead of "okay." She said that whenever she got a text like that now, from anyone, she thought of her. The room recognized the feeling immediately - that particular shorthand of a close friendship, now permanently altered.

This private knowledge is a gift to share. It honors your specific relationship with them. And it gives everyone else in the room permission to remember the person as they actually were - not as a saint, not as a symbol, but as a specific human being with specific habits.

Say what you wish you'd said, if you didn't get the chance

Some of you had time to say goodbye. Some of you didn't. If you didn't, the eulogy can hold the words that didn't get spoken - and that is entirely appropriate.

This doesn't mean making a grand declaration. It means saying the simple thing: "I loved you." "I'm sorry we lost those years." "I wish you'd known how much you mattered to me." One son said it directly, to his father, in front of the whole room: "I never told you I was proud of you. I was. I am." The room held that with him.

This isn't about guilt or regret. It's about completion - acknowledging something real, in front of people who loved the same person, and moving through it together.

Let other people help you remember

Before you write a word, do this: send a text to five people who knew them. Ask each one the same question - "What's one memory of her that comes to mind when you think of her?" Not "What was she like?" One memory. One moment. Give them until tomorrow morning.

You'll get back things you'd never have found on your own. A niece once called her uncle and asked him about a time he'd seen their grandmother laugh hard. He told her about a specific family dinner, a joke that had got out of hand, how their grandmother had laughed until she cried and then tried to pretend she hadn't. That story became the center of the eulogy. The niece hadn't been at that dinner. She couldn't have found it alone.

You don't have to use everything people send you. You're looking for the one detail that feels like it belongs in your story. When you find it, you'll know.

A note on humour

If the person you're eulogising was funny, or if the relationship was funny, don't flatten that out. Laughter at a funeral is not disrespectful - it's a form of recognition. When a room laughs, it means they knew that person too.

The rule is simple: the humour should be about them, not at them. A story about their particular stubbornness, their terrible sense of direction, the way they always told the same three stories at Christmas - these are acts of love. What to avoid is anything that would embarrass a family member or that only works if you already know the punchline.

If you're not sure whether something is appropriate, ask one person who knew them well. Their reaction will tell you.

A short example - fictional, composite

This is what the shape looks like when it's filled in:

My grandmother kept a jar of the same apricot jam on her counter for forty years. Bonne Maman. The red checked lid. I have no idea if she particularly liked it or if she'd just started buying it one year and never stopped.

What I know is that she was the kind of person who decided what was good and stayed with it. That was true of the jam. It was true of her friends - she had the same four close friends for fifty years. It was true of the way she loved us: steadily, without drama, without condition.

She used to sign her letters, even texts in her last few years, 'Your devoted Gran.' Not 'Love.' Devoted. I looked it up once. It means consecrated. Dedicated. Given over to.

That was her. Given over to us.

I just wanted to say that out loud, in front of everyone she loved.

Around 180 words. Reads in just under two minutes. One detail, one quality, one direct statement. That's the whole thing.

How to deliver it without falling apart

Print your eulogy in a font large enough to read while your eyes are wet - 14 or 16 point. Double-space the lines. Mark the places where you want to pause with a simple slash in the margin. Pause there even if you don't feel you need to - the room needs the space.

Before you go up, ask one person - a sibling, a close friend - to be your backup reader. Give them a copy and tell them: if I can't continue, take over from where I stopped. This is not a sign of weakness. It is sensible planning, and most people who do it never need to use it.

If you cry, stop speaking for a moment. Breathe. Look down at the page. The room is with you, not watching you fail. Take the water if there is water. Then continue.

Research on grief and public speaking consistently finds that audiences are deeply forgiving of emotion at memorial services - far more than the speaker expects. The fear of falling apart is almost always worse than the thing itself.

If you're finding this hard

Some of you are writing this while in shock. Some of you had a relationship with this person that wasn't simple, and you're trying to figure out what honesty even looks like in that context. Some of you were asked to speak because there was nobody else, and you barely knew them.

For the complicated relationship: you don't have to explain the whole of it. You only have to find one true thing - one moment of genuine connection, however small, however long ago. That is enough. You are not required to perform feelings you don't have.

For the person you didn't know well: ask the people who did. Your job is to gather and reflect, not to pretend to an intimacy you didn't have. The room will respect that honesty.

You don't have to write this alone. Ask someone to sit with you while you talk through your memories - they can take notes while you speak. You don't have to finish it in one sitting. You don't have to have it perfect by Friday night.

If the death was by suicide or overdose, you are not obligated to explain the cause of death in the eulogy, and you are not obligated to avoid it either. Say only what feels true and what the immediate family has agreed to. If you're carrying something heavy right now, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, any time: 988lifeline.org.

Glow's memorial feature lets family and friends add their own memories and stories to a shared space - which can ease the pressure on you to say everything yourself. Sometimes knowing that others can contribute means you only have to carry your part.

One small thing to do today

Don't open the blank document yet. Do this first: write down, by hand or in your notes app, the first memory that came to mind when you read this article. Don't edit it. Don't ask whether it's good enough. Just write what you remember.

Or send that text to five people. Ask them for one memory each. Then wait.

You don't have to finish this today. You only have to start.

Questions about writing a eulogy