Make sure your last words really matter

Rev Gillean Craig’s insider tips on how to deliver a eulogy

Every profession has its particular joys and particular trials. That’s certainly true, for us clergy, of funeral or memorial service eulogies.

They can delight and enlighten, revealing marvellous un-looked-for truths about the deceased, her life, work and influence – or they can gravely embarrass, dwelling on everything you’d rather not know about the departed.

Or they can be, at great length, excruciatingly boring. We clergy have a way of dealing with this – you don’t get to be a CofE vicar without learning that expression of benign interest (it fools no-one).

If you’re invited, coerced or blackmailed into delivering a eulogy, then the basic rule of life obtains: context is all, influencing not just what, but how it is said – and context embraces what and where.

First, is it within a funeral or a memorial service? Each of these has several subdivisions. The best funerals are those that take place in the church where the deceased and the family worshipped. It may be a place where proclaiming the Word is pre-eminent, where congregants expect to settle down for lengthy dissertations.

Or else, where the worship is carried largely by glorious music, choir, organ and hymns, raising hearts and minds to heaven, with words taking a subsidiary role. Or it may be a Funeral Eucharist, where the eulogy is just one section within something far more important: the Holy Communion, the foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet which we share with the departed.

Each of these determines a different approach to what, and how much, you say. So, as well as getting the fullest possible information from the family (assuming you’re not part of it yourself) about how they see the service, it’s worth checking with the officiating clergy.

If you’re arranging the service yourself, remember that in these church contexts the simplest and most personal is often best, far more moving than a polished recital from someone outside the community or family. Sometimes, incoherence and emotion convey, paradoxically, what we all want to be expressed. quite as personal as yours – or colleagues, or golf club chums?

The chief anxiety of unpractised public speakers is whether they will break down in tears. It’s not ideal - but we read that Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. What’s good enough for Jesus is good enough for me.

Remember that it doesn’t even have to be a single speech, delivered by a single speaker. One of the best was by the 12 grandchildren of a wonderful, opinionated matriarch, lining up in height order to deliver ‘Granny’s Twelve Commandments’. It was funny, true and made her real.

A trio of speakers often works: one for the family story, one for professional, one for social life.

And the biggest context is the subject: was it someone who lived a full and rich life, eventually dying surrounded by love and respect, or was it a tragic early death, with promise unfulfilled, leaving behind a grief-stricken family? What is appropriate for one will certainly not be for the other.

I reckon that the ability to judge appropriateness is something we’re steadily losing. At a solemn church funeral, I heard a very expensively educated nephew deliver a eulogy more like an innuendo-ridden best man’s speech – perhaps the only public speaking he’d ever listened to.

Material: don’t produce an obituary, setting out the detailed story of a life, itemising the schools, exams passed, promotions achieved, and plaudits gained.

Such a recital is fraught with difficulties: first because half your audience will know more about it that you do (‘Actually, the stint with ICI was after they moved to Penge’) and secondly because it’s jolly boring. Far better to offer a few telling personal anecdotes that illustrate the character.

In a church, there is a resonance that you can catch and build on. But, in a crematorium chapel, used for one thing only, you have to work much harder with less atmosphere.

But I imagine that you’ll most frequently be asked to deliver a eulogy, not in a funeral but at a memorial service.

Even here, the context is crucially important. Is it in a church (which the deceased might never have entered) or a purely secular venue?

Who are you addressing – is it predominantly family and close friends, who will have memories

Be partial, not magisterial. Don’t try to say everything – on the contrary, the best eulogy is the one that animates the congregation to add their reminiscences, over the sausage rolls afterwards.

Be funny, by all means, as long you’re good at telling jokes. Include failings and mistakes – if you know the widow/widower well enough to be certain not to cause offence. The best eulogies – and I have heard many such – are those that make a stranger long to have known the deceased. Oh, and don’t preach a sermon: leave that to us.