How to write a eulogy for your partner, step by step

Writing about the person you shared your life with, days or weeks after they died, can feel impossible. If you're struggling to start, that isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. Many people find that once they begin, the writing becomes one of the first ways they're able to express their grief.

Give yourself time, if you can

Funerals are often arranged quickly, and there can be a sense of pressure to get everything done. Where the timing allows, Julia's advice is not to rush:

Allow more time than is often expected to make decisions, both immediate ones such as the funeral (unless there are religious imperatives) and long-term, life ones.

— Julia Samuel MBE, Grief Works, Pillars of Strength: Time

And remember why this matters. Julia describes rituals like the funeral as giving "a shape to the letting go, the acknowledgement that this person has died and is no longer physically present". The eulogy is one of the ways that shape is made personal.

Step 1: Gather memories

Ask family and friends to send you a memory or a word that sums them up. The Grief Works programme suggests collecting other people's memories in a book or a jar at home, and a eulogy is a natural time to start. You'll get stories you didn't know, and you won't have to carry the whole task alone.

Step 2: Choose a shape

You don't need to include everything. Choose the stories that show who they were rather than listing everything they did.

Step 3: Write it the way you speak

• Use your own words. You're talking to people who loved them, not writing an essay.
• Be specific. "He always had a spare umbrella for other people" says more than "he was generous".
• Humour is allowed. Laughter at a funeral is often a sign of how well someone was known and loved.
• Keep it honest. You don't have to present a perfect person. A loving, truthful portrait is more moving.
• Aim for 400 to 700 words. Most people speak at around 130 to 150 words a minute when they're emotional.

Julia has written, reflecting on a friend's memorial, that the person we celebrate at a funeral "is the very person who should hear what is said about them". Some people find it helps to write the eulogy to their partner first, with lines like "You made everyone feel like the most interesting person in the room", and then adapt it.

Step 4: Practise, and plan for the day

If reading it yourself feels impossible, ask a family member, friend, celebrant or minister to read it for you, perhaps introducing it as "Sarah's words about Tom". That is still your eulogy.

Readings and poems people often choose

Many families include a short reading as well as, or instead of, a eulogy. Some that are frequently chosen for a partner, including non-religious options:

• Remember by Christina Rossetti
• Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye
• Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Death Is Nothing at All by Henry Scott Holland
• Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks) by W. H. Auden
• a passage from a book, a song lyric that mattered to you both, or words they wrote themselves

A funeral director, celebrant or, for a non-religious service, a Humanist celebrant can suggest more and help you shape the ceremony.

After the funeral

Keep a copy of the eulogy. Many people return to it on anniversaries or share it with grandchildren later. And don't be surprised if you feel flat or exhausted afterwards: you've done something extraordinarily hard, on one of the hardest days of your life.