When a family comes to ask me to officiate at their loved one’s funeral, a question I am often asked is, “how long should the eulogy be?” My answer is, “about 10 to 12 minutes”. I’ve learned from years of preaching that 12 minutes is the length of the average person’s attention span. After 12 minutes, we are looking for a commercial break. That being said, I have listened to 20-minute eulogies that are so riveting no one is squirming, scratching or searching for an exit.
To me, the more important question is what makes for a good eulogy? How can a single person adequately capture the quality of another’s life in just 10 to 12 minutes? The short answer is, they can’t. Nobody can. If someone has lived to be 80 years old, their breadcrumb trail is so long that you would need a week to pick up and package all the memories and stories. The best thing a eulogist can do is prop open some of the doors and windows into the life of their loved one and allow the listeners to go searching for their own memories. For example, “if there is one thing Uncle Jim was really good at, it was making you laugh.” Door open. Now everyone can access the memory of their favourite Uncle Jim joke.
The other advice I would give anyone preparing to offer a eulogy is to remember that we are story-driven people. A eulogy that is a biography of the events of someone’s life is informative, but it can leave the listener feeling disconnected and remote. Biographies speak to our minds. A simple but heartfelt story, on the other hand, can get us out of our heads and into our hearts, which is where we want our loved ones to dwell.
A few weeks ago, I met with a woman who had lost her husband after 46 years of marriage. I asked her if she could tell me a little about him as I was going to be preparing the service and giving the eulogy on the family’s behalf. She told me about his hobbies, his career, his favourite sports teams, and his family upbringing. I had pages and pages of facts. I had enough material to create a solid biographical eulogy, but there was something missing. So, I asked, “you said your husband Bill was a kind man. Can you give me an example of that?” She thought for a moment, then her eyes misted up, and she said, “when we moved to a new home about 20 years ago, it was the first time we had owned a home with a jacuzzi hot tub. Bill said to me, “on our first night in our new house, you are going to have a bath in your new jacuzzi.” There was only one problem with that: when we arrived, we discovered there was no hot water. Not to be deterred, Bill got to boiling pots of water on the stove, which he poured into the tub. He kept going until it was filled. He then set a piece of wood over the top of it on which he placed my favourite book and a glass of wine.”
When she finished telling that story, there was an almost sacred silence as we both felt the energy around us move. In that moment, Bill’s life shifted from biography to story. From mind to heart.
Richard Wagamese once said, “all that we are is story…it is all we leave behind.”
