What makes a good eulogy?
A eulogy doesn't need to be polished — it needs to be true. The ones people remember years later aren't the most eloquent; they're the most specific. A phrase someone always said. The way they made an entrance. The thing that made you laugh at their expense, lovingly. General praise — "she was kind, she will be missed" — fades within the hour. One real detail stays.
An opening that sets the tone
"For those who didn't know her well, my mother was a retired schoolteacher. For those who did — she was the one who remembered your birthday before you did, who kept the family honest, and who made a pie that ended arguments. I'm her daughter, and I've been asked to sum up eighty years of someone that large in about five minutes. I'll do my best."
How long should it be?
Most services allow three to five minutes per speaker — roughly 400 to 750 words read at a natural, unhurried pace. That's not much room, which is exactly why specificity matters more than completeness. Pick two or three qualities that were really theirs, back each one with a short, concrete story, and close with something that gives the room a moment to sit together. You're not writing a biography. You're handing people a way to remember.
What if you're too close to it to write it?
Most people writing a eulogy are doing it in the same forty-eight hours as funeral arrangements, phone calls, and their own grief. The blank page rarely stalls because you have nothing to say — it stalls because you have too much, and no order to put it in. That's the part LokalText is built for: answer the questions as honestly as you can, and let the structure and phrasing come from the tool. The memories, and the voice you deliver them in, stay yours.
Eulogy or obituary — which do you need?
An obituary is a written notice of death — dates, biography, surviving family — typically published in a newspaper or on a memorial site. A eulogy is the spoken tribute delivered at the service itself: personal, unhurried, focused on who someone was rather than a record of what they did. Many families need both, written in very different registers.