Words That Will Last An Eternity
Having a reputation as being ‘the writer’ in your group of friends or family can cut a lot of different ways, one of them being that you might get called upon to come up with wedding speeches, toasts, or, sadly, eulogies. No matter how good a writer you are, a eulogy is not an easy thing to write or deliver. Thomas Bosch at Absolute Write has some words of advice since he has the dubious distinction of ghost-writing some eulogies himself.
That piece reminded me of something I read in Esquire a few months ago–further advice from Tom Chiarella, which provided not just tips on writing a good eulogy but how to deliver it like a man:
YOU MAY CRY. Accept it. But you should not let yourself be hobbled. A eulogy is not a chance to show off what you feel. Need I say this? It is not about you. That’s why you write it down. That’s why you read it aloud until you feel in yourself every response you might have to every detail. You want to get through the moments that will touch you. When my aunt Jane died, I read a catalog of truths about her in the middle of the eulogy. At one point I said, “She smoked too much.” I had read the thing to my dad in our hotel maybe six times. I’d read it the night before about fifteen more. I’d read it probably seven times that very morning, and I’d barely even noticed the line.
But in the church, on the heels of my father’s brilliant eulogy, with my mother not ten feet away from me, the line simply stopped me cold. I could see my aunt’s hands and the huge glass ashtrays she favored with three or four lipstick-smudged butts cocked in the ashes. I hadn’t expected to feel that. I started to cry. Later on, my brother said he hardly noticed it. Sometimes I think it must have been a gulp, but it felt more like an ax to the sternum.
I can recall, inside that moment, that the way I kept my composure was to say to myself, I owe her this much at least. It was a mantra I made up in advance. I said it to myself twice before I could go on. Make up a mantra to get yourself through those moments. Scratch it out on the top of every page.
Warning: reading advice on writing eulogies may not be the party you’d hoped it would be. But it might come in handy one day.
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