How to Write a Eulogy

A eulogy is not a biography. It is not a list of every job they had or every place they lived. It is a short, spoken tribute that captures who they actually were. The best eulogies are short, specific, and honest. Three to five minutes is the right length for most services, roughly four to seven hundred words. Anything longer risks losing the room. Anything shorter can be perfectly enough.

The shape of a good eulogy is usually: an opening that places the listener in one specific moment or image (not a generic line), a middle that gathers two or three stories or qualities that show who they were, and a closing that says, in some form, what they leave behind in the people who knew them. You do not have to write it in order. Many people start with a single story they know they want to tell, and build outward from there.

Reading a eulogy aloud is its own skill. Print it large: sixteen point or bigger, double spaced. Mark your breath points and pauses in pencil. Practise it out loud, at least three times, ideally to one trusted person. If you break down on the day, the silence is fine. Pause. Drink water. Continue when you can. Designate a back-up reader before the day: a sibling, a friend, anyone you trust to finish it for you. They will not need to. But knowing they could is the kind of insurance that lets you stand up at all. If a blank page feels impossible right now, Cherished Book offers a free AI-driven first draft built from a few questions about the person you have lost. You shape what comes back into something that sounds like you, and read only what you choose to read. Nothing publishes without your review.

Below you will find guides tuned by relationship: eulogies for a parent, a partner, a child, a sibling, a friend. Each one acknowledges the specific weight of that loss and gives you memory prompts shaped to the kind of person you are remembering. None of them prescribe what to feel. They are starting points only.