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Example · Eulogy · 4 minutes

A eulogy for a mother, written out in full

SayItTrue editorial · Updated 14 August 2026

The whole speech is below — 520 words, four minutes spoken. Beside each part there's a note on what it's doing and why it sits where it does. The mother in it is invented, so nothing here belongs to a family that exists.

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What a eulogy for a mother is

A eulogy for a mother is a short spoken tribute, usually four minutes or about 520 words, given at her funeral or memorial by someone who knew her closely. It works best when it is built from ordinary detail — a job, a habit, a phrase she used — rather than general praise.

Praise is the trap. Everyone in the room already agrees she was kind, and a list of qualities gives them nothing to picture. What they can hold is the time she got home, the state of her hands in February, the thing she said when she thought a job was finished.

The example below is one way of doing that, laid out so you can see the joins. If you'd rather start with the shape before the words, the structure a eulogy usually follows is set out separately.

The eulogy, in full

Ruth and her mother Eileen are invented, and so is the family around them. This came out of a sample interview written to show the shape of a real one. It is not a customer's speech, and nobody in it existed.

Eulogy for Eileen, read by her daughter Ruth

520 words · 4:00 at 130 words a minute · Sample interview

My mother kept a pair of pruning shears in the glovebox of her car. Not for the garden. For the corner of Wickham Road, where the hedge came out over the stop sign and she'd decided the town was never going to get to it. She cut it back for eleven years. She never told anyone. I only found out because I borrowed the car and had to move them to get at the ice scraper.

For twenty-six years she did the books for Hallam's, the trucking yard out on the county road. Ledgers first, then a computer she never trusted. She came home at ten past five.

A Tuesday went like this. The radio on the windowsill, too loud. The back door open whatever the weather, because she said the kitchen held the smell of the yard. She'd have the kettle on before her coat was off. Then she'd eat two cookies out of the tin, standing at the counter, which she'd tell you she never did.

She asked about my day and she meant it, and she'd keep asking until she got something better than "fine". She was not a patient woman about most things. She was patient about that.

Then the crossword, half of it, and the pen left on the page for tomorrow.

Her hands were a mess. Short nails, a thumb she split on a filing cabinet in 1994 that never sat straight again, and every winter, cracks across the knuckles she'd fill with Vaseline before putting a glove on to sleep. She wasn't sentimental about them. She used them for everything. She opened jars, she dragged the trash cans down the drive, she did my sister's braids badly and fast on the doorstep.

I've been trying to say what she taught me. The honest answer is that she never sat me down and taught me anything. She just did things where I could see her.

She called her aunt every Sunday for nineteen years, including the four years the aunt no longer knew who she was.

Stop here. Take the time you need.

That's the whole of it, and she'd have been embarrassed by me calling it a lesson. You keep showing up. You don't announce it. You cut the hedge back and you say nothing.

What I'll miss is the phone going at twenty past eight on a Sunday morning, for no reason, with nothing to say.

When she'd finished a thing — a wall painted, an argument — she'd stand back and say, "That'll do." It meant enough. It meant stop fussing. For years I heard it as her being dismissive. It wasn't. It was how she said a thing was done and it was alright.

I'd like to say it about her and I can't, because it isn't enough and it wasn't done. Sixty-eight is not enough. She'd tell me I was making a fuss. So.

Dad, she left the crossword pen on the table on the Thursday. I haven't moved it, and I'm not going to.

Look up here. Wait until you can see the room.

Thank you for coming. Some of you drove a long way. She'd have said you shouldn't have, and she'd have counted every car.

520words of spoken prose
4:00at 130 words a minute
2stage directions, counted separately
4beats: hook, story, heart, closing address

Counted from the spoken text only. The two directions and the annotations sit outside the word count, because neither is read aloud.

How it's built

Four beats, in the order they're spoken. The running time is cumulative, so you can see where you are at any point in the room.

Section What it does Words Running time
Hook One thing she did, told without comment. Gives the room something to picture before it has to feel anything. 76 0:35
Story The job, the kitchen, a Tuesday. The version of her the room shared. 141 1:40
Heart Her hands, then what she taught without meaning to. The one planned pause sits here. 158 2:53
Closing address Her phrase, turned back on her, then the room thanked directly. 145 4:00
Whole speech Four beats, two stage directions, no quoted poem. 520 4:00

Timed at 130 words per spoken minute, which is a normal pace at a lectern. Read faster and the speech gets shorter, not better.

Four minutes is the default length for a eulogy, and it's the length most services allow for. Two and six minutes are the other choices — 260 words and 780. There are word counts for every common speech length if you've been given a slot and need to write to it.

The proportions matter more than the total. The heart is the longest beat here and the hook is the shortest, which is usually right. A hook that runs two minutes has stopped being a hook.

The questions that produced it

The eulogy interview asks eight questions, one at a time, and follows up when an answer stays general. Nothing above was invented by the draft. Every line traces back to something Ruth typed. Here is which question pulled out which part.

Hook

"Who were they, to the people who knew them best?"

Ruth's first answer was "private". That's a quality, not a detail, so the follow-up asked for one thing that showed it. The shears in the glovebox came back second.

Story

"Describe an ordinary day with them. Not a birthday or a holiday — a Tuesday."

The wording does the work. Ask for a memory and people reach for a wedding or a hospital. Ask for a Tuesday and you get ten past five, the back door, the radio too loud.

Heart

"What did their hands look like when they worked?"

The odd one, and the one that works hardest. Nobody has a prepared answer to it, so what comes back is seen rather than remembered: the split thumb, the Vaseline, the glove.

Heart

"What did they teach you without meaning to?"

Asked this way, it rules out the speeches she gave and asks about the things she did while you were in the room. Ruth answered with the Sunday phone calls.

Closing address

"Was there something they always said?"

"That'll do." A phrase the room recognises is the strongest ending available, because you're not asking anyone to accept a new idea in the last thirty seconds.

Closing address

"What will you miss most?"

Answered small, which is the honest way. Not her wisdom. The phone at twenty past eight on a Sunday, with nothing to say.

The hands question is the one people query, so it's worth saying why it's there. Ask someone what their mother was like and you get abstractions — she was strong, she was funny, she'd do anything for anyone. Those are true and they're forgettable, because the room can't see them. Ask about hands and the answer has to be looked at rather than summarised. A split thumb from 1994 is not a thing anyone can also say about their own mother.

Every question in the interview carries a hidden note on what a usable answer contains, which is how the follow-up knows to push. That's the difference between an interview and a single prompt, and it's set out at length in how an interview differs from one pasted paragraph.

Saying it on the day

Writing it is the smaller half. Most of what goes wrong at the lectern is fixable the day before.

Where to stand

Ask the funeral director where you'll speak from, before the day. A lectern gives you somewhere to put your hands and your paper, and it stops the paper shaking visibly.

Take the microphone even if you think your voice carries. It won't carry the way it does in a kitchen.

If you can't continue

Stop. Put a hand on the lectern and breathe, then start the sentence again from its beginning. The room will wait, and nobody is timing you.

Give a printed copy to one other person beforehand and ask them to be ready to take over. Say it out loud to them the day before, not in the car park.

Print it large

Sixteen or eighteen point, one side of the paper, double spaced, and never let a sentence break across a page. Number the pages.

Cue cards print straight from the draft. Paper doesn't dim, run out of battery or ask for a passcode while your hands are shaking.

Read it aloud twice

Standing up, at the pace you'd actually use, out loud rather than in your head. Twice is enough — more and you'll start performing it.

The teleprompter runs a pace timer, so you can see whether you're ahead of the words. Grief speeds people up more than nerves do.

Cue cards, the teleprompter and the night-before tips sheet are part of the $24; the full list is on the page for what's included for $24. The speech itself lives at a private link that keeps working, so it's still there the week after, when someone asks you for a copy.

What to leave out

A eulogy is spoken in a room that holds everyone at once — her sister, her neighbour, the man from the yard, a grandchild who is nine. That's the test for every line. Not "is this true", but "can all of them hear it".

  • The illness, in detail. A date and a plain sentence is enough if you want one at all. Nobody needs the ward, the scans or the last night described.
  • Family conflict. An estrangement that half the room knows about and the other half doesn't will be the only thing anyone remembers hearing.
  • Anything a sibling would object to in public. If you'd have to warn them beforehand, that's your answer. Ask them anyway.
  • Money, wills and who got what. There is no version of this that lands well.
  • A person who isn't there to answer. Naming an ex-partner, a doctor or an old employer as the villain turns the service into a hearing.

The interview asks who will be in the room and what is off limits before it asks anything about her. Those exclusions are honoured absolutely. The draft also records which of your answers each section drew on and what it left out and why, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Who this is wrong for

Three cases, stated plainly. If you want a religious liturgy written — a set order of prayers, scripture chosen to a tradition, the words your church uses — we don't write those, and your minister or celebrant will do it properly. If the celebrant is already writing the eulogy from a family questionnaire, you don't need a second one. And if you can't face answering questions about her yet, this won't help, because the interview only has what you give it.

One more, less obvious. If you want something short to read at a graveside rather than a service — sixty words and a poem — a full four-minute speech is the wrong shape, and you'd be paying for structure you'll cut.

Questions people ask

How long should a eulogy be?

About four minutes, which is roughly 520 words at a normal speaking pace of 130 words a minute. That's the default length for a eulogy here, and it's what most services allow for.

Ask the funeral director rather than guessing, because the order of service is usually set. If you're one of three speakers, three minutes each is common, and shorter is safer than longer.

What if I can't get through it?

Stop, breathe, and start the sentence again from the beginning. A pause is not a failure, and there's no version of the day where anyone holds it against you.

Arrange a second reader in advance. Give one person a printed copy, tell them where you might struggle, and agree that they'll come up if you look at them. Most people who arrange this don't need it, and it helps anyway.

Is it alright to mention difficult things?

Yes, if it's true and the people it touches could sit through it. A mother who was hard work in ways the whole room already knows can be named plainly, and that honesty is usually what makes a eulogy sound like her rather than like a card.

The line is public and private. A difficulty everyone has already lived with is fair. A grievance the room hasn't settled, or a detail a sibling would be hearing for the first time in front of two hundred people, is not.

Can someone else read it for me?

Yes, and it's a normal thing to arrange. Write it in your own words and ask a cousin, a friend or the celebrant to read it out; the celebrant can say who wrote it before they begin.

Give them the paper the day before so they can read it through once alone. Mark the pauses for them, and tell them the names they might not know how to say.

How soon do I need it?

You can do the whole interview in one sitting. It's eight questions, asked one at a time, and you can stop and come back to it.

The speech lives at a private link that keeps working, and revisions are unlimited, so a first pass on Tuesday and a change of mind on Thursday costs nothing extra. If the service is tomorrow, do the interview tonight and read the draft in the morning.

What does it cost?

$24, paid once. That covers the speech written from your answers, unlimited revisions, printable cue cards, a teleprompter with a pace timer, a night-before tips sheet, and a private link that keeps working. There's no subscription and no account to make.

Two add-ons sit at checkout and are never pre-ticked: a second speech built from the same interview for $10, and a human review, where a person reads it and sends notes back within 24 hours, for $29.

Where to start

You don't have to know where to start. The questions do that part — eight of them, one at a time, about her hands and her Tuesdays and the thing she always said.

The draft comes back in your phrasing, with a note on which of your answers each section used. Then you change whatever isn't right, as many times as you need.

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Eulogy for a Mother: A Complete Example, Annotated · SayItTrue