Writing a Eulogy for Someone You Love: A Quiet Guide

If you landed on this page because someone you loved died and you've been asked to speak: we're sorry. What follows is what we've learned from reading hundreds of eulogies and from the customers who've come through SpeechDrafter during the week of a funeral. Take what helps. Skip what doesn't.

What a eulogy is for

A eulogy is not a résumé and not a summary. The job is to help the room remember who this person actually was — not what they did on LinkedIn, but how they moved through the world, what they loved, and what it felt like to be around them. A good eulogy is the difference between a funeral that feels like a formality and one that feels like a room holding someone up.

A structure that works

1. A brief grounding sentence — who you were to them, and vice versa. Not a biography. A relationship.
2. One story that captures something essential about them. Not a greatest-hits list. One story.
3. What they were like, drawn from the story — the traits the room can nod at because they've felt it too.
4. What you'll miss, specifically. The small, strange, real thing, not the general abstraction.
5. A short close that lets the room exhale.

Things to skip

• The chronological summary. Born here, went to school there, worked at these places — the room has the program. They need you for something else.
• Apologies for being emotional. You will be emotional. That's fine. Don't meta-narrate it.
• Long quotes from other people. A line is a gift. Six is a derailment.
• Inside jokes that require explanation. If you have to set it up, it isn't landing.

On the blank page

If you are trying to write this and it's not coming: you are allowed to use a tool. SpeechDrafter's eulogy flow asks you for a handful of specific, concrete details — key life moments, what they loved, what you want the room to feel — and produces drafts you can keep, edit, or throw away. The drafts are a starting point, not a finished product. Most of our eulogy customers end up pulling one paragraph from one draft, a phrase from another, and writing the close themselves. That's the right way to use it.

And if you decide you'd rather write it alone: we hope the structure above helps. You don't owe perfection. You owe presence.