How to Write a Eulogy for a Young Person

If you are reading this in the days before the funeral of a young person, please go gently with yourself.

You do not have to deliver the eulogy. If you are a parent, sibling, partner, or close friend, the cost of standing up to speak may be higher than you can carry this week. That is allowed. Many parents and siblings do not deliver the eulogy and the funeral still honours the person. You can ask a clergy member, a celebrant, an extended family member, or a close friend to deliver something for you.

If you decide to write or speak, lower every expectation you have of yourself. The eulogy can be shorter than usual. It can be rawer. It can be simpler. The room is not waiting for polish. The room is going through this with you.

This guide is here to give you a small frame to lean on. Use whatever helps. Ignore whatever does not.

Whoever this young person was, the room will be holding the size of their unfinished life as the central fact in the room. You do not have to address that. You only have to do one thing: bring them, as a person, into the room.

The way to do that is one small specific scene.

For a child or teenager, often the strongest opening is a scene that captures their personality. The thing they always did. The phrase they used. The way they greeted the dog. The way they laughed at things nobody else found funny. The drawing on the fridge. The book they read fifteen times.

For a young adult, often a moment from the last year or two of their life. The trip. The thing they were excited about. The conversation you had recently that captured who they were becoming.

One scene. Two or three sentences. The room will see them.

Specific small things, the same as any eulogy. The room will recognise them through small details, not through abstractions.

Not "she was a kind soul." Say "she was the kid in her class who always noticed if someone was sitting alone, and she would go sit with them, and she never made a thing of it."

Not "he was full of life." Say "he laughed at his own jokes harder than anyone else laughed at them, and that was the funniest part of any joke he ever told."

Not "she had so much potential." Say what she was already, in the time she had. "She had read more books at fifteen than most adults I know have read at fifty, and she would tell you about every one of them given half a chance."

Two or three of these moments. The room will see who they were.

Open by acknowledging the room. One short sentence. You do not have to perform composure. "I do not know what to say today. None of us do. But here we are."

Tell one specific scene of who they were. Two or three sentences.

Say one or two more small specific things about them. Who they were as a friend, as a child, as a sibling, as the person they were becoming.

Close with what they leave. Not in a grand way. Plain words. "We are going to remember her every day for the rest of our lives. We are going to be a little kinder, because she was. That is what we have. It is enough."

Then sit down. The eulogy can be two to three minutes total. That is enough.

Avoid trying to make sense of the loss or to wrap it in a lesson. The room will hear any attempt at making sense as hollow, no matter how sincerely you mean it. Stay on the person. Stay on who they were.

Avoid sympathy card language with even more care than at any other funeral. "Heaven gained an angel." "She was needed elsewhere." "He is in a better place." None of these will sound true coming from your mouth, and none of them will help the room. Plain words from someone who loved them are what the room needs.

Avoid the word "tragedy" if you can. The room knows.

Avoid blame, anger at circumstances, or any settling of scores about how they died. There may be other places later. Not here.

Avoid trying to summarise everything they would have been. You cannot. Stay on what they were already, in the time they had.

Two to three minutes is right. About two hundred and fifty to four hundred words.

Shorter than usual on purpose. The room is not waiting for length. The room is waiting for one true thing said by someone who loved them, and then for you to sit down and be held.

If you can only manage three sentences, three sentences is enough. The room will receive them with both hands.

Be especially gentle with yourself in the days after delivering this eulogy. Standing up and saying something true about a young person who died takes a particular kind of courage and exacts a particular kind of cost.

You may feel hollow. You may feel relieved. You may feel angry. You may feel grief differently than you expected. All of these are normal.

Talk to one trusted person. Take a quiet day. Eat something. The eulogy is one act in a much longer process. You did the hardest part of this week. The rest of the grief has its own time.