How to Write a Eulogy for Your Son

If you are a parent reading this in the days before your son's funeral, please read this paragraph slowly.

You do not have to deliver the eulogy yourself. Many parents do. Many cannot. Both are right, and the room will understand either choice without question.

You can write the eulogy and have someone else deliver it. A sibling. A close friend. The minister or celebrant. The piece is no less yours. The person reading speaks your words.

You can also choose not to write the eulogy at all. Someone else who loved him can speak. You can say a few short sentences from your seat at the end if you want, or not at all. Nobody is judging you.

Whatever you choose, choose it deliberately, knowing what you are choosing. Then proceed.

Whatever age your son was when he died, the room will be thinking of him as your child. Lean on that. Open with one specific memory of him at five, or eight, or twelve.

The first day of school. The drawing he gave you. The thing he said in the car when he was four. The way he fell asleep on the sofa with his shoes on. The argument at fifteen you both still laughed about at thirty.

One specific small scene. Two or three sentences. The room will recognise the boy he was. Then you can move on to who he became.

If your son was very young when he died, this opening is the whole eulogy. The small scenes of his short life, told plainly, are everything the room needs.

Specific small things. Not "he was kind." Say "he was the kid who would notice the one child sitting alone at the birthday party and go sit with them, and he never made a thing of it, and we only found out about it from the other parents."

Not "he was funny." Say "he made me laugh in ways no other person in my life ever has, and the house this week feels strange in a way I cannot describe, partly because nobody is making me laugh in that particular way anymore."

Not "he was loved." Show the love through specific moments. The phone calls home from university. The way he was with his nieces. The thing he always said when he hugged you goodbye.

Two or three details like this. The room will see him.

Open with one specific memory of him as a child. Two or three sentences.

Tell who he was, in your honest words. Three to five sentences. The boy. The young man. The person he was becoming.

Tell two or three small specific stories. From childhood, from adolescence, from the man he was. Or, if his life was short, several small moments from the years you had.

Close with what he leaves. Be careful here. Do not try to make sense of his death. Do not try to wrap the loss in a lesson. Speak only to what is true. The way you will remember him. The way his absence sits in the house. The thing you will carry with you for the rest of your life because of him.

Then stop. The closing is short and quiet.

Avoid trying to explain or make peace with his death in the eulogy. The eulogy is not where that happens, and the room is not waiting for it. Stay on him.

Avoid sympathy card phrases more carefully here than anywhere else. "He is in a better place." "He was needed in heaven." "He is at peace now." None of these will sound true coming from a parent. Plain words from a parent's mouth are what the room needs.

Avoid trying to be strong for the room. The room is there to hold you, not the other way round. If you cry, you cry. If you have to stop, you stop. The piece does not have to be perfect. It only has to be his.

Avoid blame, anger at circumstances, or any settling of scores about how he died. The funeral is not the place. There may be other places later. Not here.

Two to four minutes is right for a son's eulogy. About three hundred to five hundred words.

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

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