Short Eulogy Examples
Ninety seconds to two minutes — for when several people are speaking, when the service is tight, or when that is genuinely all you can manage. A short eulogy is not a lesser one.
The ninety-second template
Four sentences. That is the whole thing.
I am NAME. NAME was my RELATIONSHIP.
ONE STORY, in three sentences maximum.
That was him/her. THE TRAIT.
CLOSING LINE, spoken to them.
A finished ninety-second example
I am Michael. Joan was my aunt.
When I was twenty-two and had made a genuine mess of things, I turned up at her door at eleven at night without ringing first. She did not ask a single question. She made up the spare bed, put a glass of water beside it, and said we would talk in the morning if I wanted to and not if I did not.
That was Joan. She gave people a room and no interrogation.
Thank you, Joan. The light was always on.
When short is the right choice
- 1
When three or four people are speaking. Four short eulogies are better than two long ones.
- 2
When the crematorium slot is twenty minutes, which is common.
- 3
When you know you will not get through more than a page.
- 4
When the person who died was brief themselves. Some people would be appalled by six minutes.
How to cut a long one down
- 5
Cut the second story. Never the ending.
- 6
Cut the biography. Keep the story.
- 7
Cut every sentence that explains the story instead of telling it.
- 8
Read it aloud with a timer. Two minutes is about 260 words spoken slowly.
Questions people actually ask
How short can a eulogy be?
Ninety seconds is a complete eulogy if it contains one story and one closing line. Nobody has ever left a funeral wishing a eulogy had been longer.
How many words is a two-minute eulogy?
About 260 words spoken at funeral pace, which is slower than you think. Always time it out loud.