Name the kind of aunt she was
Aunts come in several different shapes. The funny aunt who made every family event better. The fashionable aunt who took you shopping when you were thirteen. The second-mother aunt who stepped in during a hard chapter. The aunt who lived three streets away your whole childhood and was always there.
Take a minute to name what kind of aunt she was. Write it down in one sentence. "She was the aunt who made every birthday feel like the most important day of my year." A sentence like that becomes the spine of the eulogy.
The room will recognise the shape of the aunt the moment you describe it. A sentence that names her well does most of the work for you.
What to actually say about her
Specific small things. Aunts often live in the small details. The thing she always said when she saw you. The card she sent every year. The dish she always brought to family events. The way she remembered every cousin's birthday.
Not "she was kind." Say "she was the one who showed up at my graduation, with a card she had written inside, for every one of her seventeen nieces and nephews, year after year, for thirty years."
Not "she was funny." Say "she could not tell a joke to save her life and we all loved her for it, because she would set them up beautifully and then ruin them at the last second, and that became the joke itself."
Two or three of these moments and the room sees her.
A simple structure
Open by acknowledging the room. If your uncle and cousins are in the front row, briefly acknowledge them.
Name the kind of aunt she was. One sentence.
Tell who she was, in your honest words. Three to five sentences.
Tell two or three short specific stories. Family events. Childhood memories. The thing she did for you when you needed it.
Close with what carries on. The recipe still made. The card you find yourself sending because of her. The way you sit with your own nieces and nephews because of how she sat with you. Then stop.
What to avoid
Avoid the long list of every job she held, every place she lived, every committee she sat on. Stay on the aunt.
Avoid sympathy card phrases. Plain words land harder.
Avoid private family stories that the room cannot follow. Pick one or two and set them up briefly.
Avoid making the eulogy too short or too generic just because she was an aunt and not a parent. If she mattered to you, give her the same care.
How long it should be
Two to four minutes for an aunt's eulogy. About three hundred to five hundred words.
Other family members may be speaking too. Coordinate so each of you takes a different angle.