A portrait. Not a record.
An obituary is a record — born, married, worked, retired. A eulogy is trying to put the person back in the room for a few minutes, so that everyone there recognises them and can let them go. What this will not do is most of what makes it safe to use.
The refusals come before the writing.
Being wrong here is not a quality problem. An invented detail about someone's life, read aloud at their funeral in front of the people who knew them, is worse than an eulogy that says less. So the rules that shape this job are mostly things it will not do, and they are worth stating plainly rather than left implied.
It will never ask how someone died, and it will never put a cause of death in the text even where it is mentioned in passing while answering something else. It will never assume a faith, a surviving spouse, a family structure, or that everyone named is on speaking terms — every person in the eulogy comes from what you actually say, named exactly as you name them. It will not narrate an illness as something fought and lost. It will not tell the room how to feel, and it will not write the sentence engineered to make people cry — that is sentiment performed on your family's behalf, not warmth.
None of this is caution for its own sake. It is the same rule, stated wherever it applies: nothing gets written into a eulogy that the person speaking did not actually say.
What "hooks, not coverage" produces.
"Patricia was born in 1948 and grew up in Leeds. She left school at sixteen and worked in administration for over thirty years before retiring in 2010. She married in 1971 and had two children."
"Mum did the crossword every morning. In pen." Then, kept rather than softened: "She was not soft. She would be appalled to be called soft, and she would say so, and she would be right."
The first version is accurate and nobody in the room recognises her from it — six facts, none of them her. The second is seven words and a room that knew her is already smiling. Where a detail is missing — what year, what she said when she arrived, a third small thing — the text leaves it as [ADD FACT: what is needed], phrased as a question a kind person would ask rather than as a form field, because it is being read at midnight by someone with very little left to give it.
How it works.
- A short set of gentle questions. Their name, who they were to you, two or three things you remember, what they were actually like, who is in the room, and whether faith was part of their life. Nothing is asked that will not change what gets written.
- Top up once. Jobs cost pence from your balance; this job spends only what it actually uses, never more than the stated limit, and the rest stays in your balance.
- You get the eulogy and a shorter version. The short one exists for a service that overruns, or a moment where you need somewhere to stop early.
- You get delivery notes written for reading it while grieving. Print size, unstapled pages, where to pause, and that you are allowed to hand the text to whoever is leading the service if you cannot continue.
A job that fails to generate spends nothing at all.
Who this suits.
Worth it if
- You have been asked to speak and have written four sentences and deleted them.
- You know the person was not always easy and do not want a eulogy that pretends otherwise.
- You are worried about getting through it on the day and want practical help with that, not just the words.
Not worth it if
- You want it to write in their voice, or to know what they would have wanted said. Neither is something it will do.
- You are hoping it will settle how a death is described when the cause has not been established. It will not state one either way.
- You want a polished, upbeat celebration-of-life tone over answers that are plainly grieving. It follows your register, not a house style.
Questions people have asked at difficult hours.
Why does it need to know who is in the room?
So the eulogy is written knowing who is listening — a young grandchild, a colleague who never met the family, someone who has come a long way. It is also the gentlest way to surface an estrangement or a sensitivity without asking about it directly, because how you answer this question tells the eulogy what it needs to know without making you explain.
Will it list our family for me — who survives them?
No, on principle. A surviving-relatives list is exactly the place an omitted name becomes a wound that lasts years, and it has no way to know who that list should include. If you want names read, you give them, and they are repeated exactly — nobody is added by inference.
There is a family estrangement. Will it try to smooth it over?
No. It will not resolve a difficulty you mention, invent a reconciliation, or write a graceful line that papers over it. What it does instead is flag it as something for you to decide what, if anything, you want done about it — that decision stays yours.
The doctors used the word battle. Should the eulogy?
It will not, even if you use it yourself in an answer. Framing an illness as something fought and lost turns dying into a failure of effort, for someone who had no choice in the matter — the eulogy stays with what they were like rather than how the illness is often described.
Is there any length I have to write to?
No fixed one — tell it how long you have and it drafts to that at roughly a hundred words a minute, with a shorter version supplied as well. Crematorium slots vary and this will not assume one for you; it will remind you to confirm the actual time with whoever is running the service.
What if the memories I have are quite thin? I don't know what to say.
It says so plainly rather than padding the gap with warmth it invented, and it returns what there genuinely is, with one specific, gentle follow-up question if one would help. A short, true eulogy is a better outcome than a longer one built on nothing.
When you are ready.
There is no rush and nothing timed about this. Two or three things you remember, in whatever order they come, is enough to start.
Top up once. No subscription. About 28p — never more than 40p.