How to write a eulogy
I have become familiar with mourning lately. I considered going into the stats here. I could list the various hospitals I have rushed to and the ones I have slowly meandered towards, delaying the final goodbye a little longer. I thought about discussing the funerals I have been to, why Ave Maria is better than Amazing Grace (sorry mom), why I prefer an open casket formal wake to a vaguely sad potluck/memorial. I have delivered eulogies for friends and uncles and in-laws and grandparents and a house. I am not here to list my dead people credits. I am here to work through my grief and existential dread. I am here to help you write a eulogy.
You have just learned that someone close to you died. Someone who you love and remember being around for your entire life is no longer around and will not be around for the rest of your life. Do not jump straight to writing a eulogy. You have to get there.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m sure you’re feeling helpless and sad. You’re wondering if you should call his wife and kids, or give them space. They are busy in the worst way. They’re dealing with grim, horrible paperwork. They are, in the back of their mind, worried about how to word the Facebook post. They are so, so, so sad. You have to do something, though. You can’t learn of this death, feel this deeply sad feeling of being both empty and full, and do nothing. Part of you wants to do nothing. You cannot do nothing.
Call them. Text if you’re more comfortable texting. But call them. If you can be there, near them, do it. Tell them they are not alone, even if they know. Tell his kids you are here for them if they need to talk about anything. They will lie and say they are fine, all things considered. That’s okay. None of us are fine. Be helpful. Carry something.
Buy the family dinner. Don’t let them muster the strength to be polite and refuse. Be firm. They do not want to deal with dinner arrangements. Italian travels well and most homes are within delivery range of Italian food. Nobody has to think about Italian. They are not thinking about dinner. They are thinking about every chance they had to say “I love you” and didn’t, every time they forgot to call him back, every unanswered text. Buy them dinner. If you can’t, because somebody already has, buy them dinner tomorrow. Leftovers are fine. Lasagna keeps.
Send flowers. They will appreciate flowers. They think they don’t care about flowers, and might tell you that you don’t have to send them. Tell them you know that. Send flowers. Flowers smell good and they are pretty, even from the other side of the room when they come in from doing some grim emotionally exhausting task that will blend into all the others. They will see the flowers and they will smile sadly.
Now you’re ready to write a eulogy. There will be a chance to read it in the future, at the funeral or the wake or the memorial or the celebration of life or whatever ritual your newly deceased loved one would have hated because of course they wouldn’t love it, what a ghoulish thought. I know it seems hard. Everything is hard. I can give you some help with this. It might not actually help, but that’s okay. Your eulogy is not for him, it is for you. And it’s for me. It is for the rest of us.
There is no wrong way to grieve, but there are wrong ways to eulogize. Be sad, but not depressing. Be funny, but do note write jokes in a eulogy. Do not tell them what Webster’s says a eulogy is. In the opening paragraph I said I have become familiar with mourning. I did not say I am a mourning person, because that would be a joke and we are not writing jokes right now. This is the kind of thing to look out for. Your instinct is to deflect the grief with humor, but you don’t have to. In fact, you can’t. You don’t have to do anything. But you cannot do nothing.
The eulogy is about him. Tell a story about him. Like when he drove down from Montreal with me and my dad. I sat in the backseat and listened to them talk. We had just seen their dad, my grandfather, for the last time. We abandoned I-87 to cut through Chestertown, passing places they knew from their childhood. They told stories about each other. They laughed about the time he lit fireworks on the bus, and the time they left a motorcycle as a deposit on a keg. Watching them be brothers made me miss my own brother. We stopped at Friends Lake and the Circle B and in Warrensburg to see their mom’s mural. We got garlic knots from the pizza place across the street and he smiled as he took a bite and said it was reassuring that some things really don’t ever change, the pizza up here is still terrible.
Be conscious of the story you choose. Leave out the embarrassing parts, for his sake. Unless everybody knows the embarrassing parts and will smile or laugh sadly when you get to those parts. Do not under any circumstances forget those parts. Don’t tell a dumb story without tying it back into praise for the person who used to exist and now does not. This is not a wedding speech. This is a eulogy. You are allowed to acknowledge his children’s weddings that he will not be at, and that he would have been an amazing grandfather but now he never will be. But don’t just recite milestones that he will not reach. Remind us of him. He was a doctor. He helped people. He made a difference. He loved his family. Not in the “complicated” or “deep-down” way that some men love their families. It radiated from him. He loved his family so much.
Avoid the particulars but don’t be obvious about it. Don’t come right up to the edge of it and then chicken out. If you’re coming close to saying the word “overdose,” just say overdose. If you’re coming close to saying “cancer,” say cancer. If you’re coming close to saying “lost and cold and alone and scared,” don’t. A eulogy should be sad, but not depressing.
Do not mention the coroner’s report.
If you hit a wall and can’t think of anything, quote someone else. This is a great place to work in a poem. There are so many poems about death. Some of them are comforting. Read a poem out loud. They will appreciate it. It will lend you an air of authority, like you’ve consulted a professional. I recommend the Henry Van Dyke one, about how death is a ship, or the Henry Scott-Holland one about how he’s just in the other room for a bit. People love poems but get enough time between deaths to forget they love poems, except when they don’t.
Nobody will notice if you borrow from other eulogies. Every person is unique but death is not. Eulogy sentiments are pretty universal. Most funeral homes have helpful examples on their websites so that grieving mothers and sons and wives and children and fathers and husbands don’t have to suddenly become eloquent. You do not have to reinvent the eulogy. You will not blow anyone’s mind by pointing out that it isn’t fair that we are so sad and the rest of the world is moving along as if everything is fine when really, nothing is fine at all. We all know these things already, and it’s okay. The eulogy needs to remind us that we will be okay. A good one will make us believe it.
When you deliver the eulogy, don’t read the whole time. Have it with you. Glance at it. Use the eulogy you wrote as a guard rail. The eulogy you write doesn’t have to be the one you read. I am here to help you write a eulogy, not read one. I am tired of reading eulogies. I want to hear a good one. He was a good eulogizer. It’s part of being the older brother, I think.
Be present. Say what comes to mind. Take your time. Breathe. Stand up straight. Take this seriously. Set a good example for the subsequent eulogies. Deliver, in your hopeless and helplessly still-alive words, some comfort and love to the rest of us stuck in a world without him. Tell us we will be okay. Make us believe it. Please.
