The eulogy in a funeral
When I use the word “eulogy” in relation to the funerals I perform, I’m talking about the section outlining the deceased person’s life story. When I’m talking about people’s stories and memories and anecdotes, I use the word “tribute” – we’ll look at those in another post. So this post is about the life story, the eulogy.
There’s several options for how the eulogy is developed and delivered:
- I write it and deliver it
- you write it and I deliver it
- I write it and you deliver it
- you write it and deliver it
- we skip the eulogy altogether.
Let’s take a look at each of them.
I write and deliver the eulogy
First, the most common one in my personal funeral practice: I write and deliver the eulogy. I’ve been through my funerals and discovered that I have written and delivered 64% of the eulogies.
There are many funeral celebrants in Australia who refuse to write the eulogy. They think it’s good for the family’s healing to go through that process themselves. While I hear that, I disagree. I can’t tell you how many families I’ve sat with, asking them all my questions, only to have them say on my way out, “I don’t know how you’re going to pull all of that chaos into something coherent.” I always tell them not to worry, that’s my job! Some families don’t have the skills or the wherewithal to write a eulogy, and that’s absolutely fine with me.
Honestly, I actually love the process of finding out all the information I need to write the eulogy. I’m inherently nosy curious, and I’m always fascinated about how people go to where they are. Everyone has a story, and I see it as a big part of my role to find that story and honour it.
How I go about developing a eulogy
If a family asks me to write the eulogy, I’m going to ask a whole lot of questions about their loved one. When I was a baby funeral celebrant I would ask individual categories of questions – childhood, education, family life, work life. As I became more experienced and confident, I started to trust that if I asked about a person’s chronological life, all the necessary details would come out.
These are the types of questions I ask. Obviously some of them won’t be relevant based on answers to preceding questions, but it gives you an idea.
Early life
- A brief family tree of their immediate family, from parents through to great-grandchildren
- Where were they born? Where did the family live?
- What was family life like during their childhood? Did they get along with their parents and siblings? Did they spend time with extended family? Did they have friends?
- Depending on what was going on in the world when they were born, I may ask about their involvement in world events such as World War II etc.
- Where did they go to school? Did they enjoy school? Were they good at school? What were their favourite subjects? Did they prefer lessons or sport or music? Did they finish secondary education?
Adulthood
- When and what was their first job?
- Did they undertake tertiary education? Where/what?
- What and where was their first professional role?
- How did they meet their significant other? (Side note: I’m kind of amazed how many people don’t know how their parents met. If you don’t know and you’ve still got living parents, go ask them how they met! It will probably be a delightful story!) How long did they date before marrying? Where did they live after marriage? Did they have children? When?
- If there was more than one significant other, all the above details for each.
- Where did they live throughout their life? How often did they move and why?
- What jobs did they have throughout their working life? Where and when and what?
Later life
- Did they have grandchildren/great-granchildren etc? What did the grandkids call them? Did they enjoy being a grandparent? Did they spend much time with their granchildren?
- What kind of hobbies did they have?
- Were they involved in their local community? Did they do any kind of volunteer work? Did they have any political involvement?
- Did they travel – Victoria, Australia, the world? Where and when?
- How did they spend their time in retirement?
- Would you like to tell me about the end? You don’t have to, but I’m here to listen if you would like.
Generalities
After I think I’ve got a good grip on the person’s life story, I’ll follow up with some more general questions:
- Were they happy?
- What did they teach you?
- Did they have a religious or spiritual faith? Did they ever talk about if they believed they were going somewhere after they died?
- Could you give me some words you’d use to describe them?
- Is there anything else you would like to tell me about them?
Homework?
Now I never send these questions to a family before we meet. I know some celebrants do, to allow the family to find information they don’t have or know offhand. But I feel a bit like that’s giving the family homework and I’m personally not keen on that. If there’s any details they don’t know during the meeting, they can find them out later, or we can just skip over them. Exact dates etc aren’t required, and it doesn’t matter too much if some of the finer details aren’t correct. We get things as close as possible and gloss over the rest!
I like to ask these questions during the meeting, and based on the answers provided, I can choose which questions need to be asked next. It took me several years to get comfortable with that approach, but I’m there now and it’s all good.
Writing the eulogy
I like to write as soon as possible after I’ve met with the family, to make sure I don’t get confused or lose the thread I’ve picked up during the meeting. So I’ll head home and straight to the desk whenever possible.
I attempt to use every piece of information from my notes. If the family thought it was important enough to tell me about, it’s going in my eulogy. I always send the full script to the family to edit as much as they like, so if there’s anything in there they’re not keen on, they can just take it out.
Delivering the eulogy
It’s my great honour to deliver the life story of a person during their funeral. I am well aware of the privileged position a family puts me in when asking me to deliver their loved one’s eulogy, and I do everything I can to deliver it with warmth and authenticity.
So that’s the most usual method in my funeral practice: I write and deliver the eulogy. Let’s look at the other options.
You write the eulogy and I deliver it
In about 4% of my funerals, the family writes the eulogy and I deliver it on their behalf. I will always mention that the family have written it and thank them for their efforts. But I am happy to stand up and deliver it for them if they feel they’re not able to do it themselves.
If a family wants to write the eulogy themselves, I will always offer to send them my eulogy prompts document. It is less comprehensive than the list of questions above, but gives people a good idea of the things a eulogy should cover:
- Early family life: Place of birth, parents and their occupations, siblings, where they grew up, interests
- School life (primary, secondary, tertiary): Friends, incidents, achievements, qualifications, trade or academic
- Career: Workmates, career moves
- Military service / Historical significance
- Family life: Marriage, children, events, grandchildren, great-grandchildren
- Community service, achievements, beliefs, causes they fought for, political ideals
- Memorable events in their life: Holidays, anniversaries, achievements
- Animals and nature: Pets, gardening
- Hobbies, interests, sports, community involvement: Club memberships, positions held, sporting achievements
- Favourite songs, tunes, prose, poems, prayers
- Likes and dislikes: Music, the arts, poetry, literature, TV, radio
- Personality: Preferences, likes, dislikes, sense of humour
Family-written eulogies are always beautiful and completely different from anything I can come up with. It’s wonderful if a family has the energy, skills, and time to write a eulogy, but it’s definitely not a requirement.
I write the eulogy and you deliver it
This is the least popular option in my funeral practice: it’s only happened twice. It’s always a bit weird to hear my words coming out of someone else’s mouth. I write very much the way I speak, and my words can often sound a bit awkward when read by someone else. But as I’ve mentioned in other posts, I see my job is to provide options and facilitate whatever the family wants. If they want me to write the eulogy and have one of them deliver it, that’s what they get!
You write and deliver the eulogy
This is the second most popular option in my funeral practice: 21% of my families have written and delivered their own eulogies. I will send them the eulogy prompts as when they are writing for me to deliver. I always ask them to send me the eulogy before the ceremony so I can keep an eye on the timing of the ceremony and so I’ve got it in case they need me to jump in and deliver it on the day.
We skip the eulogy altogether
I was surprised to discover that in 9% of my funerals we had skipped the eulogy altogether. There’s several reasons we may skip the life story:
- only family members will be present, all of whom know their loved one’s life story
- there are lots of people who want to give tributes, not leaving any time for a life story
- they want something very short and sweet
- there is nobody around who knows the details of this person’s life story.
These are all legitimate reasons for leaving out the life story; I will ensure the funeral takes whatever form requested. We can still craft and deliver an authentic, meaningful farewell when we don’t tell someone’s life story. And that’s really the main thing: that the farewell is authentic and meaningful. That’s what I’m always aiming for, and if I can manage that, I’ve done my job.