Writing a Good Eulogy
The last thing that anyone wants to have to do is to write a eulogy for someone who has passed away and someone that they loved. It is a very hard and sensitive subject for people and they can get very sad and emotional over the passing of a loved one.
But everyone who has lost a loved one wants to pay a special tribute to them and feel like they need to do something to remind everyone else just how special that person was. This is done by holding a funeral service for them and giving eulogies dedicated to the deceased person.
A eulogy is classical Greek meaning "good words" and is a type of talk or speech given to an audience that praises a person, animal, or a thing. They are very common in funerals and are a very good way to show your admiration for the deceased person and to share your memories of them with other people who knew and loved the same person that you did.
Sometimes they are given for people who are still alive and are given on special occasions like birthdays, retirement parties, and promotion parties. They celebrate the life and all of the accomplishments of the person and are a great way to show how much that person's life was appreciated.
Usually they are given by a close friend or a family member who had a very tight relationship with the deceased person. Some denominations and churches discourage giving these speeches because it takes away from all of the other traditions and helps to maintain the respect needed at the services.
The first thing that you need to do when writing this talk is to gather as much information about the person's life as you can. This includes all the good memories you have shared with them and all of the correct dates for things such as their birth, their marriage, any children they may have had, and other surviving family members.
You want to try and capture the person's essence in your speech and you want to let the respect that you hold for the person come through in your tone and the subjects that you choose to talk about. To help you narrow this long list of things to talk about down a little bit, pick a theme that you can center all of your thoughts around.
This will help you tie all of your thoughts together and identify the common elements in their life. It will also make it easier for the audience to follow and they will appreciate the organized way that you have presented the speech.
After you pick out the best moments that you have shared with this person and have picked out the concepts that you feel were the most important to this person, then write it all down on note cards.
Write down each new idea on a separate note card so that it keeps the whole talk more clean and organized. Then you can arrange the note cards in whatever logical order that makes sense to you.
This also allows you to easily omit or add any new ideas that you may have from the time you started writing the eulogy right up to the time that you deliver your talk. Rewrite your talk as many times as you need to.
The more that you fix it up, polish it, and reword it, then the better it will be. You can also practice your talk on your spouse or a sibling so that you can get some good feedback before you deliver the address to everyone else.
This will help you to not be as nervous and it will help your speech sound better. Realize that you may become very emotional while giving the talk, so allow yourself a little bit more time to get through the whole thing.
Make the eulogy a celebration of their life and something joyous. Do not make it a somber mourning of their passing because they probably would appreciate it more if you share the good things that they did and the legacy that they left behind.
"Writing a Good Eulogy", was submitted 08/24/2010 under category Poetry.
