How to Write a Eulogy for Your Grandmother

Most grandmothers had a place where they were most themselves. For many it was the kitchen. For some it was the garden. For others a particular armchair, a sewing room, the front porch. Start the eulogy there.

Close your eyes for a moment and put yourself in that room. What did it smell like. What was on the counter. What sound was always in the background. What did she do with her hands.

Write three sentences about that room. Not abstract. Concrete. The kettle on the stove. The radio at low volume. The cat on the second chair. The smell of whatever she was always cooking.

That image is the doorway into the eulogy. The room will walk through it with you.

Specific small things. Not "she was loving." Say "she made the same cake every birthday for every grandchild for forty years and would have been mortally offended if you suggested buying one."

Not "she was strong." Say "she raised six children in a small house with no money and somehow made every one of us feel like the favourite."

Not "she was funny." Say "she said exactly what was on her mind, to anyone, at any age, and you never knew what was coming next, and that was half the joy of being in a room with her."

Two or three specific moments are worth more than a page of praise. The room recognises a real grandmother by the small details, not the big words.

Open by acknowledging the room and saying who you are. Keep it short.

Say who she was, in your own honest words. Three to five sentences.

Tell two or three small specific stories. The kitchen. The card. The phone call. The thing she always said. The thing she taught you that you only understood years later.

Close with what carries on. The recipe still made. The phrase you catch yourself saying. The way you sit with your own grandchildren now, because of how she sat with you. Be specific. Then stop.

Resist the urge to add a poem at the end unless it was hers, or a prayer unless the family wants one. Your closing line, in your own voice, is enough.

Avoid the saint version of her. Real grandmothers were sharp and stubborn and opinionated, and that was half of what made them lovable. The eulogy that shows the whole woman is the one the room remembers.

Avoid sympathy card phrases. "Passed away." "In a better place." "Watching over us." Say "died." Say "I miss her." Say "the kitchen is quiet now." Plain words land harder.

Avoid the long list of every place she lived, every job she worked, every committee she sat on. The eulogy is the portrait, not the timeline.

Avoid making it a speech about your grief. The grief is in the room already. The eulogy is the portrait of her. Keep returning to her.

Print it large, double spaced, numbered. Read it out loud at home three times before the day.

The first read is the hardest. By the third, you will know which lines hit you and you can be ready for them.

Bring a glass of water to the lectern. Drinking water is a legitimate way to take a long pause if you need one.

Slow down. Eulogies are almost always read too fast. Speak slower than feels natural. The room is not in a hurry. The room is with you.

Have one trusted person in the front row prepared to take over if you cannot continue. Tell them in advance. You almost certainly will not need them.

Three to five minutes for a grandmother's eulogy is right. About four hundred to seven hundred words.

If multiple grandchildren are speaking, two or three minutes each is plenty.

A short eulogy delivered with feeling beats a long one any day. Cut anything you are unsure about. Trust the small moments.