After polls determined that our number one fear is public speaking -- topping even death -- writer Peggy Noonan observed the implications: at a funeral, most of us would prefer lying in the coffin to standing at the lectern. Will you be ready when your time comes (to deliver a eulogy)? This particular speech is doubly daunting because a grief-stricken friend or loved one will ask you to do it, on very short notice. It helps if you don't think of eulogy as a performance art, but as a gift. You are not expected to replicate televised eulogies given by professional entertainers and politicians. Your task is to console, not to entertain -- though sharing amusing memories may be a welcome part of what you offer.
Reading your eulogy is appropriate and expected, so write it out. Start by considering what you cherish about your subject. This might involve how the deceased looked. No detail is too small. Novelist Katherine Anne Porter's tribute to her colleague Flannery O'Connor, who died at age 39 of lupus, captured a precise image: "I want to tell what she looked like and how she carried herself and how she sounded standing balanced lightly on her aluminum crutches, whistling to her peacocks, who came floating and rustling to her, calling in their rusty voices."
Eulogist Mario T. Garcia offered a visual portrait of César Chávez addressing a privileged Yale University audience, an image very different from the dynamic civil rights leaders of his era: "Here was César, a small, Indian-looking, modest leader of farm workers with his usual checkered shirt, the kind you buy at Penney's or Sears. He was a humble farm worker with little education, who spoke softly and with little emotion. It was hard to believe that he was one of the most important labor leaders in the country's history."
Stanford Professor Tobias Wolff recalled his fellow writer/teacher Andre Dubus, clad in a U.S. Marines tee-shirt and a Rambo headband, jerking his wheelchair around a room: "Andre had about him a loud blustering maleness -- one of my sons, then quite young, called him Yosemite Sam."
Expand your memories to consider what a novelist might call an elucidating moment. Did your subject ever say anything that revealed the essence of who (s)he was? Eulogist John Taylor recalled maxims his brother, Major David G. Taylor, often recited before he was killed in Iraq: "Life isn't fair -- get over it. No whining. You are probably not entitled to anything you didn't work for. Freedom isn't free, someone has to pay the price, and it might as well be you."
Speaking at the funeral of the witty host of PBS-TV's "Firing Line," William F. Buckley, Jr., his son Christopher's anecdote evoked loving laughter: "I was with him in Connecticut ... last October at a fundraiser for the local library, billed as 'A Bevy of Buckleys.' An article had appeared in the local paper, alerting the community ... My eyes alighted on the sentence: 'The Buckleys are a well-known American family, William F. Buckley being arguably the best known.' I handed [him] the clipping and waited for the reaction I knew would come. Sure enough within seconds, he looked up with what I would describe as only faintly bemused indignation and said, 'Ar-guably?'"
Jim Forest's tribute to activist Dorothy Day, revealed that virtuous people -- even pacifists -- can have sharp edges. He recalled some typical Day retorts: after someone told her she was too hot-headed, Day shot back: "I hold more temper in one minute than you will hold in your entire life." When a journalist who told her it was the first time he had interviewed a saint, she snapped, "Don't call me a saint -- I don't want to be dismissed that easily."
A reminder of the faith or wisdom that influenced the deceased can be the best way to summarize the meaning of a life. At a eulogy for New York Giants owner Wellington Mara, his son John recalled that after a string of losses a sportswriter -- referring to the elder Mara --asked : "What can you expect of an Irishman named Wellington, whose father was a bookmaker?" The sting from that was still fresh a few days later when Mara decided to answer that question at a kickoff luncheon:
"I'll tell you what you can expect. You can expect anything he says or writes may be repeated aloud in your own home in front of your own children. You can believe that he was taught to love and respect all mankind, but to fear no man. And you could believe that his abiding ambitions were to pass onto his family the true richness of the inheritance he received from this father, the bookmaker: the knowledge and love and fear of God, and second to give you (our fans and our coach) a Super Bowl winner."
Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill's granddaughter Catlin said it all when she told mourners that O'Neill called the Sermon on the Mount "the best political speech ever written." She then read that section of the Gospel of Matthew, known as the Beatitudes.
Finally, keep it short. A brief, well-thought-out eulogy that acknowledges even one trait you cherished about the deceased will be appreciated far more than the kind of long, rambling tribute that invariably begins focusing on the speaker rather than his subject. Your heartfelt remembrance, simply told, is one of the sweetest gifts you can give, because it calls for grace under pressure, and usually courage. You have said yes to comforting those who mourn, even as you are one of them.
Carol DeChant is the editor of the new book, 'Great American Catholic Eulogies'.
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Obama's Eulogy: A Blessing to a Bereft Nation
Eulogy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eulogy Speech Guide with Eulogy Examples, Sample Eulogies, Tips ...
Tony was a teacher, a retired marine, and also a brilliant poet. Two of his cousins were Baptist Ministers, and I knew they would amply cover that end...but I pondered about what I could offer to the mix. I was Tony's friend, and publicist...so finally I wrote about his skill with poetry, of the admiration so many expressed for him personally...and also his wonderful sense of humor. There truly was an embarrassment of riches to draw from, and i later heard that his friends and family were fascinated to hear about that area of his life.
I felt honored to be able to give so fine a person his last send off...and it helped me to say goodbye as well.
My mother had a saying, "Give me my flowers while I can smell them." My father, being a retired pastor, & having delivered many eulogies at their friends & peers funerals, she had determined she would no longer go to funerals. I sat down and wrote a letter to them expressing my love, but more importantly recounting special childhood memories, reminding them that any failures of their offspring were not their failings as parents and delivering to them their eulogies that not one minister or bishop, friend, relative or neighbor could. More importantly, they got to get their flowers while they could smell them.
Three years ago, I was privileged to care for my mother for five months before her succumbing to congestive heart failure. It was then she thanked me for "the letter". When my siblings requested I write her eulogy, I looked high & low for the letter, without success. Then I came to the realization that it was unnecessary, because the people who needed to hear it had already. I quickly wrote something appropriate for the cemetery burial service. When it is my father's time, perhaps the letter will be found & if siblings choose, can
1. there are numerous television cameras in the church
2. you've given a huge chunk of change to the parish
so even if you've been say, a 60-year member of the same church, you're not entitled to ten minutes of some nice words in your honour. You wait for the funeral breakfast like everyone else who doesn't fall under item 1 or 2.
The Catholic church does not subscribe to Sola Scriptura, but rather abides by the "traditions" it has developed over the centuries, even though they may have no basis in the Bible, such as the notion that suicide is an unforgivable sin that condemns the individual to hell.
â– Do notcriticize the person in whosehonor the entertainment is given.
â– Make no remarks about his equipment. If the handles are plated, it isbest to seem to not notice.
â– If the odor of the flowers is too oppressive for your comfort, remember that they were not brought there for you, and that the person for whom they were brought suffers no inconveniencefrom their presence.
â– Listen, with as intense an expression of attention as youcan command, to the officialstatement of the character and history of the person in whose honor the entertainment is given; and if these statistics should seem to fail to tally with the facts, in places, donot nudge yourneighbor, or press your foot upon his toes, or manifest by any other sign, your awareness that taffy is being distributed.
â– If the official hopes expressedconcerning the person in whosehonor the entertainment is given are known by you to be oversized, let is pass... donot interrupt.
â– At the moving passages, bemoved but only accordingto the degree of your intimacywith the parties giving the entertainment, or with the party in whosehonor the entertainment is given. Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant acquaintance should sigh, a stranger shouldmerely fumble sympathetically with his or her handkerchief.Where the occasion is military, the emotions should be graded according to themilitary rank, the highest officerpresent takingprecedence in emotional violence, and the rest modifying their feelings according to their position inthe service.
â– Do not bring your dog.
Moral of the story? The eulogy is the minister's job.
Moral of the story, if you want to honor a deceased octogenarian, perhaps a funeral in the church is not the best venue for your family.
0:-)