Eulogy for an Aunt Examples for Five Very Different Aunts

A eulogy for an aunt should say plainly what she was to you, because the word aunt covers everything from a second mother to a distant relative. Aim for 400 to 600 words, about three to four minutes spoken. Below are five complete examples, one for each kind of aunt, written out in full and ready to adapt.

Somebody has asked you to speak, and the front row is the hard part. Her children may be sitting in it. Her brothers and sisters may be sitting next to them. You are the niece or the nephew, and you were picked because you can write, or because you were closest, or because nobody else could face it.

Then there is the word itself. Aunt is the loosest word at a funeral. It covers the woman who half raised you, the woman you saw twice a year, a great-aunt you knew as a child, and the neighbour you called Aunty for thirty years without anybody correcting you. Every one of those is a different speech.

So find the aunt below who is yours, swap in your own two memories, and cut anything that is not true about your family.

Five eulogy examples for an aunt

Each one is complete and can be read as it stands. Names, places and jobs are invented, so replace them with yours.

1. For the aunt who helped raise you

For an aunt who stepped in during an illness, a separation or a bad few years. The careful part is her own children, who are in the room and had less of her because you had some.

My name is Sarah. Linda was my aunt, and for about six years she was also the person who got me to school.

My mother was ill from the time I was eight. Aunt Linda lived four streets away. She did not make a speech about it. She just started turning up. There was a bag of my clothes in her spare room by the end of that first month and it stayed there until I was fifteen.

I want to be careful here, because Mark and Jenny are in the front row and she was their mother first. What I was given came out of hours that belonged to them. I have thought about that a lot this week. What I keep landing on is that she did not seem to ration it. There was never a sense of a queue.

She fed me. She signed my forms. She came to the parents evening where my English teacher said I was clever but lazy, and she laughed all the way home and then made me do the homework anyway.

She was not soft. If you were feeling sorry for yourself she gave you about four minutes and then asked what you were going to do about it. I have used that line on my own children. It works.

She worked thirty-one years at the sorting office and talked about it the way other people talk about a crossword. Early shifts, home by two. She never once said she was tired in front of us, and I only worked out later, when I had a job and children of my own, how tired she must have been.

She kept a tin of fifty pence pieces on top of the fridge and it was understood, never discussed, that if you needed bus fare you took it and said nothing.

The thing I will miss is the kitchen. Four of us round a table that seated three comfortably. The radio on. Her asking everybody the same question, how was your day, and then actually waiting for the answer.

The last four months were hard and I am not going to dress them up. She was still asking about everybody else from a hospital bed, which annoyed the nurses and surprised nobody in this room.

Aunt Linda, I had a mother and I know exactly who she was. You were something else, and there is no good word for it, so I will use the plain one. Thank you for the spare room. Thank you for the six years. Thank you for never once making me feel like a guest.

Mark, Jenny, she was so proud of you both. She told me so in October, at that same table, and made me promise not to repeat it because she said you would get big heads.

I am repeating it anyway.

2. For the aunt who was the fun one

For the aunt you saw at Christmas and in August, who arrived and changed the house. A funny eulogy is allowed here, as long as the jokes are about her and not at the expense of anybody sitting down.

I am Danny. Carol was my aunt, my dad's older sister, and the person who taught me that adults are not necessarily in charge of themselves.

We saw her twice a year. Christmas, and two weeks in August. That was enough, because Aunt Carol arrived like weather.

She turned up one Christmas Eve with a full-size trampoline in the back of a Vauxhall Astra. No box. She had taken it apart in the shop car park with a pound coin. My mother asked where it was going to go. Aunt Carol said the dining room, obviously, and it was in the dining room until February.

She was banned from the kitchen for the whole of the nineties after what this family still calls the brandy butter incident, and I am not going to explain it, because half of you were there and the other half would not believe me.

She smoked out of the bathroom window and told us she was checking the guttering. She let me drive her car in a field when I was fourteen. She told my sister that make-up was a scam and then wore more of it than anybody I have ever met. She lost at cards with a bitterness that frightened grown men.

I should say something about her actual life, because she would hate a speech that was only about her being funny. She ran a launderette for twenty-two years. She knew the first names of about four hundred people and the troubles of most of them. When my father was ill she drove ninety minutes each way, three times a week, for eleven weeks, and complained about the traffic and about nothing else.

She never married and she thought the question was hilarious. She said she had a good flat, a dog and the radio, and she could not see where a husband would go.

Here is the part I did not understand until I was about thirty. None of it was for her. She was funny at us, on purpose, every single time. She worked out very early that the way into a quiet nephew is to be ridiculous near him until he relaxes. It worked on me for thirty-eight years and I never once caught her doing it.

She was also the only person who wrote to me when I dropped out. One card. It said, you are not in trouble, ring me, and underneath, a phone number I already had.

She kept the card I sent back to her, which I did not know until Tuesday. It was in a tin with her bus pass and a photograph of my father at about nineteen.

Carol, you were the best two weeks of every year. The dining room has never been the same.

Thanks for the trampoline. Thanks for the field. Thanks for the card.

3. For a great-aunt you knew mostly as a child

The deliberately short one, about ninety seconds. If your honest material is five childhood memories, five childhood memories is the speech. Padding it is what makes a eulogy sound false.

My name is Priya. Auntie Meera was my grandmother's younger sister, which makes her my great-aunt, and I knew her best between the ages of six and eleven.

What I have is a house that smelled of cardamom and floor polish, a bowl of sweets on a high shelf that she always pretended to have forgotten about, and a woman who called every child in this family by the same name and never once got it right.

I saw her maybe six times after I turned twelve. I am not going to stand here and claim more than that.

But she was ninety-one. She buried a husband, two sisters and a son, and she still answered the door on a Sunday afternoon with the kettle already on. That is most of a century of turning up for people.

Auntie Meera, thank you for the sweets. I knew where the shelf was the whole time.

4. For an aunt the family found difficult

For the aunt who said what she thought, fell out with people, and was loved anyway. The rule is to be fair rather than sweet, because everybody in the room already knows.

I am Rachel, and Pauline was my aunt.

I want to start with something true, because Pauline could not stand being handled. She was difficult. She fell out with my mother for nine years over a chair. She said exactly what she thought about your job, your weight and your husband, usually in that order and usually at a wedding.

Half the people here have a Pauline story that is not entirely affectionate. I have two. She is not here to argue, so I am going to be fair about her rather than sweet.

Here is the rest of it, and it is not a redemption, it is just the other half.

When I was twenty-two and in trouble with money, Pauline was the only member of this family I would have told, because she was the only one who would not have told anybody else. She lent me eleven hundred pounds in an envelope and said, I will not be mentioning this. And she never did. Not once. Not when we argued. Not when she was furious with me about something else entirely.

She was like that about everything. No warmth and no discretion in public, total discretion in private. If you told Pauline something at her kitchen table it went nowhere, and people knew it. That is why there was always somebody at her kitchen table.

She worked in school dinners at Ashfield Juniors for nineteen years. The children were frightened of her and queued up for her anyway, which tells you most of what you need to know.

And she turned up. Every funeral, every hospital visit, every awful Tuesday. She was there the night my father died and she did not say one comforting thing, she just sat in that corridor until six in the morning. I have thought about that more than about any of the kind words anybody said to me that week.

She had a laugh that came out of nowhere about twice a year, and it was worth the wait. She liked the horses, cheap sherry and being right, in that order.

She was not kind in the way we usually mean it. She was reliable, which is rarer.

The chair, since somebody will ask, was my grandmother's nursing chair, and the argument was not really about the chair, and both of them knew that, and they made it up in the way this family makes things up, which is to say they never mentioned it again.

Pauline, I am not going to say you were easy. You would smell it from here. You were straight with me when nobody else was, and you kept your mouth shut when it cost you something.

I am grateful. I would not have put money on getting through this without crying, and here we are.

5. For the aunt who was not actually related to you

For the woman you called Aunty and never explained. Say the relationship plainly instead of apologising for it, and speak to her real children while you are up there.

My name is Tom. Rose was not my aunt. I called her Aunty Rose for thirty-one years, and if you had corrected me at any point in those thirty-one years I would have thought you were being strange.

She lived next door to my mother from 1989. That is the entire legal basis of it.

What it actually was: she was at my christening, both my graduations, my wedding, and the hospital on the morning my daughter was born. She kept a key. She knew which window you had to rattle. She had a drawer in her kitchen with my school photographs in it, which I only found out on Tuesday, along with a birthday card she had already bought for me, which I am going to keep.

My mother was on her own with two jobs. Aunty Rose did not offer, because an offer can be refused. She just took over four until six and made it look like something she wanted anyway.

Michael, Dee, I want to say this to you properly while I am standing here. I know I was in your house a great deal. I know your mum had a finite number of evenings and I had some of them. Thank you for sharing her, and for never once calling me a nuisance to my face.

She called me love for thirty-one years and my actual name maybe four times, all of them when I was in trouble.

When my mother died, Aunty Rose was at the house before I was. She had already answered the door to two neighbours, found the kettle and put a cloth over the mirror in the hall. She did not say anything about it. She just did the next thing, and then the thing after that, for about four days.

She knew the name of every dog on Beresford Road and not one neighbour's car registration, which was a running joke for about twenty years. She went to the same caravan every June. She sang in the kitchen and nowhere else. She thought one glass of sherry was a big night and two was a scandal.

She died in her own front room with the radio on, which is exactly what she said she wanted, and the last thing she said to me was to take the ham out of the fridge.

I know the word for what she was to me is not aunt. I also know there is no better one, and that families are allowed to invent titles when the real ones do not reach far enough.

Aunty Rose. Thirty-one years. Not related to me at all. Nearest thing I had to a grandmother, and the second-best cook on that street, and she knew who the best one was, and she minded.

How long should a eulogy for an aunt be?

Four hundred to six hundred words, which comes out at three to four minutes spoken. That is the standard slot for a niece or nephew when several people are speaking.

Read it out loud with a timer before you trust the word count. Most people read at 130 to 150 words a minute at a funeral, slower than normal speech, because they stop. Three hundred words is about two minutes and is respectable if it is three hundred true words.

If you have a two-minute slot, cut to 250 to 300 words and drop one of the two memories rather than shortening both. Our guide to how long a eulogy should be has the word count for each slot length.

What should I say in a funeral speech for my aunt?

Say what she was to you in one plain sentence, give two specific memories as proof, say one thing she taught you or changed in you, and thank her. A eulogy for an aunt is a short spoken tribute, usually three to four minutes, that says who she was to the speaker and offers two or three specific memories as the evidence.

The opening sentence does more work than anything else, and the version that works names the relationship exactly:

• "Aunt Linda was a wonderful woman who touched many lives." True of everybody, so it tells nobody anything.
• "For about six years, Aunt Linda was the person who got me to school." One sentence, and the room already knows what kind of aunt she was.

Specific beats fond, every time. Nobody remembers that you called her kind. They remember the detail that proved it.

Leave out her illness in any detail, the family argument that is still live, money, and anything you would not say with her children listening, because they are.

Where do you stand if her own children are speaking too?

Name your relationship once, early, and then stay strictly inside your own material. If you are the niece, speak as the niece. Do not narrate her marriage, her labour, her last weeks or her role as a mother, because those belong to the people in the front row and you will be stepping on the speech that follows yours.

Two things help. Ask her children, or whoever is organising, what they are covering: five minutes on the phone stops two speeches giving the same memory. And say out loud the thing everybody is already thinking, the way Sarah does in the first example. Acknowledging that you had hours that belonged to them is generous and takes fifteen seconds.

If you were an in-law, a step-niece or a family friend, standing is the whole problem, and the longer answer is on our page about a eulogy for a mother in law, where the reasoning transfers directly. If somebody is also speaking for her husband or brother, the eulogy for an uncle page carries a line bank you can borrow from without repeating yourself.

How do you turn one of these examples into your own in twenty minutes?

Pick the closest example, then work through these five steps in order.

1. Swap the names and the place. Her name, your name, her street, her job. Two minutes.
2. Replace the two memories. This is the only part that has to be yours. Write the two things you would tell a friend about her, not the two that sound suitable at a funeral. Ten minutes.
3. Delete every line that is not true. If she did not have a kitchen table, cut the kitchen table. A borrowed detail is the one thing a room can hear.
4. Fix the last line. End on her, or on one small thing of hers, not on a general statement about loss. Two minutes.
5. Read it aloud, standing up, with a timer. You will cut two sentences, change one word, and find out where you are going to struggle. Five minutes.

If step two is where you stall, and it usually is, our eulogy writer asks you a few quiet questions about her and puts a full draft on the page for you to rewrite. You can read the preview before paying anything. It will not know her. It will give you something to edit instead of a blank screen.

Common questions about writing a eulogy for an aunt

What are some good examples of eulogies for an auntie?

The five above are written out in full and are meant to be adapted: the aunt who helped raise you, the fun one, a great-aunt you knew as a child, a difficult aunt, and an aunt who was not blood related. Pick the one closest to your situation rather than the one that sounds most impressive, because the fit is what makes it sound like you.

What is a nice tribute for an aunt who died?

The strongest tribute is one concrete thing she did, said out loud. "She kept a key to our house for thirty years" lands harder than any adjective. If you want a line to close on, try naming the small thing of hers you will keep noticing: her handwriting, her chair, the way she answered the phone.

What are some beautiful words to say to an aunt?

This question usually gets answered with card inscriptions, which are the wrong register for a eulogy. In a card you can write "always in our hearts". Standing up at a funeral you want plain speech: "You were not my mother and there is no word for what you were, so thank you for the spare room." Say the ordinary thing specifically and it will sound beautiful without trying to be.

What is a good farewell message to an aunt who died?

Two or three sentences, addressed directly to her, at the very end of the speech. The pattern that works is a name, a thank you for one specific thing, and a short last line: "Aunt Carol, thanks for the trampoline, thanks for the field, thanks for the card." Avoid the word goodbye if it makes you stop. Thank you is easier to get out.

Can a niece or nephew give the eulogy for an aunt?

Yes, and it is common, particularly when her own children do not feel able to speak. Nieces and nephews often make the best speakers at an aunt's funeral because they have the affection without the weight. Say your relationship in the first sentence so the room knows who is talking, keep to three or four minutes, and leave the mother material to her children.

Before Saturday

You already know what she was to you. The only hard part is that there is no single word for it, which is why a borrowed speech with your two memories dropped into it works better than a blank page and good intentions.

Pick the aunt above who is closest, change what is not true, and read it out loud once in a room on your own. If you would rather start from something than from nothing, you can see a free preview first.