How to Write a Eulogy for a Difficult Person, Honestly

To write a eulogy for a difficult person, say one true thing, one specific thing, and one kind thing, and leave the rest out. You are not required to lie about them and you are not there to settle it. Aim for accurate rather than warm. A room that already knows the truth will trust you more for saying it.

You have been asked to speak about someone who was hard work. Maybe they drank. Maybe they were cruel to you and charming to everyone else. Maybe you had not spoken in years and now there is a funeral on Saturday and your name is on the order of service.

Everything you have read so far has told you to focus on the positives. That advice fails in a real room, because the people sitting in front of you were there too. They know. A speech that scrubs the person clean does not sound generous, it sounds false, and it makes the speaker look frightened.

There is a better way to do this, and it is not brutal honesty either. It is a narrow, usable middle: true, specific, short. Below are five complete eulogies written that way, for five different kinds of difficult, plus the exact lines that hold them together.

The three sentences that do most of the work

A eulogy for a difficult person is a short public account of someone's life that stays true without turning into an accusation. Almost all of the difficulty is solved by three sentences placed early.

1. The naming sentence. One plain line, near the top, that admits what the room already knows. It buys you the rest of the speech, because once it is said nobody is bracing for it.

• "My dad drank, and for about nine years it cost him me."
• "Gerald was difficult. I am going to say it once, out loud, at the start."
• "We had not spoken in nine years."
• "The man I knew and the man my mother knew were not the same man."

2. The limiting sentence. One line that tells the room what you are and are not going to do. This is the sentence that stops you being dragged into either a whitewash or a courtroom.

• "That is not the whole of him and it is not the last word on him."
• "I am not going to stand here and give you a man I did not have."
• "This speech is only about the one I got."

3. The specific sentence. One concrete, verifiable detail that only you would know. Not a quality, a detail. "He was generous" is arguable. "He did my whole paper round the morning I had chicken pox and never mentioned it again" is not.

Those three moves, in that order, carry a difficult eulogy. The rest is just telling the truth at a manageable size.

Five eulogies for five kinds of difficult person

Each of these is complete and can be read as it stands. Names and details are invented. Take the shape, the order of the sentences, and the level of honesty, and put your own person into it.

1. For a father who drank

My father was Raymond Ellis and he was sixty-eight. I am his son, David, and I want to start with the part most of you already know, so that nobody has to sit through twenty minutes wondering when I will get to it.

My dad drank. It cost him jobs, it cost him a marriage, and for about nine years it cost him me.

That is not the whole of him and it is not the last word on him, but it is true, and I am not going to stand up here and hand you a man I did not have.

Here is what else is true. My father could fix anything with a motor in it. He taught me to change a tyre in the rain on the A38 when I was seventeen, talking me through it with his hands in his pockets, because he said I would not learn it if he did it for me. He knew the name of every bird in the garden and he was right about them. He cried at the end of films and blamed hay fever.

He got sober at sixty-one. He would want that said plainly rather than gently. Seven years. He rang me on a Tuesday and said, I am not going to make a speech about it, I just want you to know where I am. We had seven years of Sunday phone calls after that. They were short, they were mostly about football, and they were the best thing I had.

I am not going to tell you he made up for it. He did not have the time and that was never the deal. What I will tell you is that he tried in the years he had left, and that he was kinder at the end than he was at the start.

Dad, you were hard work. I am glad I got the last seven years. Thank you for the tyre.

2. For a mother who was hard to please

My mother, Eleanor, died on the ninth of this month at eighty-four, in her own house, which is exactly where she always said she would die, and she was right about that as she was right about most things.

I am her daughter, Ruth. I have three brothers and they have all very kindly agreed that I should be the one to do this, which tells you something about my brothers.

Mum had standards. If you sat in a room with her, you were being assessed. The tea was too weak. The coat was the wrong coat. She once told me my wedding flowers looked municipal, and she told me this during the reception, and she was not wrong.

Being loved by my mother was a bit like being audited. Thorough. Regular. You came out of it knowing exactly where you stood.

I spent about thirty years wishing she was softer. I want to say honestly that I no longer do. Softer would have been easier. It would not have been her, and it would not have got four children through the years after my father left, when there was no money at all, and she did not tell us that until we were adults.

She was not a warm woman. She was a reliable one. She turned up to every school play, every hospital appointment, every crisis at two in the morning, without comment, and without ever once making you feel she was being generous by doing it. She would arrive, she would deal with it, she would criticise your kitchen, and she would go home.

I know what she would say about today. She would say the sandwiches are dry and the hymn was pitched too high for most people.

Mum, they are and it was. Thank you for turning up. Every single time. I noticed.

3. For a man most of the room found difficult

I am Michael Okafor. I worked with Gerald for nineteen years, which I think makes me the longest-serving member of a fairly small club.

Gerald was difficult. I am going to say that once, out loud, at the start, because there are about sixty of us in this room and I would guess fifty-five of us have a Gerald story. It would be odd to spend the next four minutes pretending otherwise.

He was blunt. He did not do small talk. He sent emails at eleven at night that opened with the word No. He once told a client to her face that her idea was the worst use of money he had seen all year. He was right, and we lost the account.

He was also the only person in that building who never lied to me. Not about a deadline, not about a mistake, not about my own work. When Gerald said a thing was good you could take it home and put it on the wall, because he did not say it otherwise.

In 2011 I made an error that should have cost me my job. Gerald found it, fixed it over a weekend without telling anyone, and then on the Monday told me exactly how stupid it was, for about forty minutes. I have never made that mistake again. I have also never forgotten that he did the weekend first and the forty minutes second.

He was not warm, and he would be embarrassed by a warm speech, so this is not one.

Gerald, you were hard going. You were also straight with people, which is rarer than being nice, and there are a dozen of us in this room who owe you a career.

That will do. He would want me to sit down now.

4. For a brother you had not spoken to in years

I am Stephen. Paul was my brother. We had not spoken in nine years.

I am telling you that at the start because most of you know it already, and a speech that talked around it would be a strange thing to sit through.

I do not know what Paul's last nine years looked like. I know his flat from one visit in 2017. I know he had a dog called Biscuit. I know from Jenny that he got up early and walked by the canal, that he was good company on a Friday, and that he was the person she rang when her car died.

So I am not going to stand here and give you a portrait of a man I had stopped knowing. That would be a lie, and Paul had no patience for those.

What I can give you is the first twenty years. He taught me to swim by taking me to the deep end and letting go. He did my entire paper round on the morning I had chicken pox and never mentioned it again. He was funny in a way that got us both thrown out of places.

We fell out over something that felt enormous and now sounds small when I say it out loud. Neither of us moved first. Then there was no time left to move.

If you are sitting here with a brother you have not called, call him this week. That is the only advice I have and it cost me a great deal.

Paul. I am sorry it went the way it did. Thanks for the deep end.

5. For a grandfather who was two different men

My grandfather, Thomas Reilly, died last Thursday at ninety-one. I am his granddaughter, Aoife.

I want to say something at the start that I have thought about carefully. The man I knew and the man my mother knew were not the same man, and this speech is only about the one I got.

My mother has been generous enough to let me say that out loud. She grew up with a father who was strict past the point of fairness, who did not apologise, and who was hard to live with. That is her account of him and it is not mine to soften.

By the time I came along he was seventy. Something had gone out of him, or been worn out of him, and what was left was a man who kept boiled sweets in the glovebox and drove me to swimming at six in the morning for four years without once complaining about the hour.

He taught me to play chess badly, then let me beat him for a year before admitting he had been letting me. He came to a poetry reading of mine in a room above a pub with eleven people in it and sat in the front row in a suit.

Both of these things are true at once. I have stopped trying to make them fit together. Nobody is one thing for ninety-one years.

So I am not here to tell my mother that her father was lovely. I am here to say that he was different by the end, that some people do change, later than anyone wanted and less than anyone needed, and that the change was real.

Granddad, thank you for the early mornings and the boiled sweets and the front row.

Mum, I am sorry he was not this man for you.

What should you not say in a eulogy for a difficult person?

Do not say anything the person cannot answer. That is the single test, and it sorts almost every borderline line you will write. Naming a fact the room already lives with is honest. Adding an injury they cannot reply to is a settling of scores in front of an audience who did not agree to watch it.

Concretely, leave out:

• The diagnosis or the details of how they died, unless the family has already said it plainly in public.
• Money and the will. Nothing said at a lectern has ever improved a probate dispute.
• Anything about a named living person. "He was a terrible husband to my mother" makes your mother the subject of a speech she did not write.
• The list. One naming sentence is honesty. Four is a case.
• The redemption you did not get. Do not invent a deathbed apology, a moment of peace, or a reconciliation. Someone in that room knows it did not happen.
• Forgiveness you have not given. You do not have to say you forgive them. Silence on that point is complete and nobody will notice it is missing.

There is a fuller version of this in our piece on what to include in a eulogy and what to leave out, which covers the ordinary cases too.

What is a good opening line for a eulogy for someone difficult?

The best opening line for a difficult eulogy names the difficulty in one short sentence and then moves. You are not building to a reveal. Say it in the first thirty seconds, while the room is still settling, and the tension leaves the building with it.

Ten openings that work, said aloud in under six seconds each:

• "I am going to be honest with you, because he was not a man you could be dishonest about."
• "My mother was not an easy woman, and she would be insulted if I stood here and said she was."
• "There are about sixty of us here and most of us have a story. I am going to tell you two of mine."
• "We had not spoken in four years. I want that said at the start rather than whispered at the back."
• "I did not know him well. I am going to tell you what I did know, and it will be short."
• "He was difficult. He was also mine."
• "I am not going to pretend today is simple, because it is not, for most of the people in this room."
• "My father and I had a complicated forty years. Here is what I want to keep from them."
• "The man I am about to describe is the one I knew. Others here knew a different one."
• "Dad would have hated this, all of it, the flowers especially."

If the first line is the part stopping you, we have twenty more of them, for easier situations as well, in how to start a eulogy without freezing at the first line.

How do you end a eulogy for someone you had a hard relationship with?

End by speaking directly to them in one short line, and stop there. Do not summarise the relationship, do not resolve it, and do not reach for a larger meaning. The room will take the plain line and do its own work with it.

Endings that hold up:

• "Dad, you were hard work. I am glad I got the last seven years."
• "Thank you for turning up. Every single time. I noticed."
• "You were straight with people, which is rarer than being nice."
• "I am sorry it went the way it did. Thanks for the deep end."
• "Rest now. You were tired for a long time."
• "That is all I have, and it is true, which I think you would have preferred."

Note what none of those do. None of them claim peace. None of them say the relationship was secretly fine. A eulogy for a difficult person is allowed to end unresolved, because it was. Our post on how to end a eulogy has twelve more, including the ones that work for a room split down the middle.

How long should a eulogy for a difficult person be?

Aim for two to three minutes, roughly 300 to 450 words. That is shorter than a standard eulogy of three to five minutes, or 500 to 750 words, and the shortness is doing real work.

If you cannot find much good to say, go shorter still. A ninety-second eulogy made of plain facts, where they were born, what work they did, who survives them, and one small true thing, is a complete and respectable eulogy. Nobody is owed a warm speech, and a short honest one is better than a long invented one.

The longer a difficult eulogy runs, the more room there is to drift into either defence or complaint. Every one of the five examples above could be read in under three minutes. A short, true speech is far harder to argue with than a long, careful one, and it is much easier to get through without your voice going.

What if the room disagrees with you?

Assume it will, and write for that. In a room where some people adored the person and others were damaged by them, the speech that works is the one that does not ask anybody to change their mind.

Three things make that possible:

• Claim only your own view. "The man I knew" and "in my experience" are not weak phrases here, they are precise ones. They let a sister sit through your version without feeling her version has been overwritten.
• Let other people keep theirs. One line does it: "Others here knew a different man, and they are not wrong."
• Do not aim for the last word. You are giving an account, not a verdict.

If you are worried about getting through it at all, the technique of marking the high-risk lines and rehearsing them flat is covered in how to deliver a eulogy without crying. Difficult eulogies break speakers at different points from ordinary ones, usually at the kind line rather than the hard one.

Frequently asked questions

How do you eulogize a difficult person?

Name the difficulty once in a plain sentence near the start, say one limiting sentence about what you will and will not cover, then spend the rest of the speech on specific, verifiable detail. Keep it to two or three minutes. Do not resolve the relationship, and do not claim a forgiveness or a reconciliation that did not happen.

What should you not say in a eulogy?

Leave out anything the person cannot answer: medical detail the family has not made public, money and inheritance, criticism of named living people, and any grievance longer than a single sentence. Also leave out invented redemption, which is the most common mistake in this kind of speech, and the one a room spots fastest.

What is the best opening line for a eulogy?

For a difficult person, the best opening line names the difficulty in under ten words and then moves on, for example "He was difficult. He was also mine." For an easier eulogy, a plain introduction works best: who you are, how you knew them, and one specific thing about them in the first two sentences.

What is the best last line of a eulogy?

The best last line speaks directly to the person who died, in short plain words, and stops. "Dad, you were hard work. I am glad I got the last seven years." Avoid closing on a quotation, a summary of the relationship, or a phrase that tells the room how to feel about what they just heard.

How do you write a powerful eulogy?

Specificity, not intensity. A powerful eulogy is built from detail nobody else in the room could have supplied: the tyre in the rain, the paper round, the boiled sweets in the glovebox. Three concrete details beat a page of adjectives, and in a difficult eulogy they do something extra, they prove you are telling the truth.

Is it acceptable to be honest in a eulogy about someone who hurt you?

Yes, within limits. Naming a fact the room already knows is honest and usually lands well. Using the lectern to describe the harm in detail is not, because the person cannot reply and the audience did not choose to hear it. One sentence of honesty buys you the whole speech. Four turns it into something else.

Before Saturday

Pick your naming sentence first. Everything else in the speech gets easier once that line exists on paper, because the thing you have been dreading is already handled and the rest is just telling people about a person.

Then write three specific details and stop. That is a eulogy. If you would rather start from something on the page than from nothing, you can see a free preview of a draft and rewrite it in your own words.

You are not required to be fair to them today. You are only required to be accurate, and brief, and then to sit down.