A CLASS FOR EULOGY Key thoughts about your audience
Who are they – family and close friends only or others too? There may be specific things to say or avoid. How will they feel? Listening to you will obviously be highly emotional for those closest to the person, and some people will be in tears. But this doesn’t mean the eulogy should be mournful and depressing. People will be grateful if what you say is uplifting and inspiring. What do they want to hear? Most people want to hear good things about a person who has died, and forget the bad things. But people don’t become saints just because they die. Your audience will want to feel you have captured the essence of the person – what makes them special. So be honest, but selective. How long should it be? Even in the circumstances of a funeral, many people find it difficult to listen to one person talking for a long time, so a eulogy should really be over in a matter of minutes – just how many is a matter of individual choice. Think of the person A good eulogy doesn’t just tell the audience about the person – in a sense it brings the person to life in their imagination and gives them something by which to remember them. You can do this by telling stories about the person: the happy things, the funny things, the sad things, the unusual things that happened, which sum up their life. Talking about these and the enduring qualities which describe what they were really like as a person, will help you build a picture for the audience with your words. You may have all the information you need, or you may want to speak to other people close to the person to get precise details and check your facts. You may have arranged the funeral as a friend of the deceased, not knowing too much about them and having no relatives to turn to for information, in which case you can base your eulogy on your impressions of them as a person. Once you have the material and have thought about it in relation to the people you are talking to, you are ready to start putting it together. Use these points to help build memories and stories. You could start by looking around the house and pulling out old photo albums, going through old letters or emails, and any other memorabilia. Perhaps go for a walk around your loved one’s house and garden as this may trigger memories and ideas. Talking to close relatives, friends, and acquaintances is also an excellent way to remember things. Here are some prompts to help you get started: Who am I speaking to? How would the person like to be remembered? What made them special? Favourite pastimes and interests, likes and dislikes? When were they happiest? Who was really close to them? What did I really like about them? What did other people really like about them? What are the highlights of their life story? If I could say only three things about them, what would they be? Who can help me check my facts? 3. How to Write a Eulogy The hardest task in preparing any talk is often not so much deciding what you’re going to say as deciding how to organise it into a structure with a beginning, middle and end. There are no hard and fast rules – here are some suggestions about preparation and use our Guide to Public Speaking for more in depth tips. Write the eulogy with the deceased’s family and loved ones in mind Dwell on the positive, but be honest. If the person was difficult or inordinately negative, avoid talking about that or allude to it gently. Make sure you don’t say anything that would offend, shock, or confuse the audience. For example, don’t make any jokes or comments about the deceased that would be a mystery to the majority of the crowd. Do I write it word for word? Yes, if it helps. But if you do, speak it out to yourself as you’re writing, otherwise your words may sound stilted when you actually come to deliver it. When we speak normally, we don’t speak in perfect sentences. What’s important isn’t the grammar, but the points you are making and the stories you are telling. So if you can, don’t write word for word, but put key points on a card to have with you. An exception to this is where you are using a piece of poetry or song, in which case you may want the State the basic information about the deceased Though your eulogy doesn’t have to read like an obituary or give all of the basic information about the life of the deceased, you should touch on a few key points, such as what his family life was like, what his career achievements were, and what hobbies and interests mattered the most to him. You can find a way of mentioning this information while praising or remembering the deceased. Include Family Write down the names of the family members especially closed to the deceased. You may forget their names on the big day because you’re overwhelmed by sadness, so it’s advisable to have them on hand. Make sure you say something specific about the family life of the deceased — this would be very important to his family. Illustrate parts of their life with a story and give specific examples of great or kind things they have done. Use specific examples to describe the deceased Mention a quality and then illustrate it with a story. It is the stories that bring the person–and that quality–to life. Talk to as many people as you can to get their impressions, memories, and thoughts about the deceased, and then write down as many memories of your own as you can. Look for a common theme that unites your ideas, and try to illustrate this theme through specific examples. If the deceased is remembered for being kind, talk about the time he helped a homeless man get back on his feet. If the deceased is known for being a prankster, mention his famous April Fool’s prank. Pretend that a stranger is listening to your eulogy. Would he get a good sense of the person you’re describing without ever meeting him just from your words? NB KR There are actions described wrt the tone, speaking styles etc which all have been cut out.} Earl Spencer’s Funeral Oration for Princess Diana “We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana but rather in our need to do so. For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today. Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic. Today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only now that you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult. We have all despaired at our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.” “Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality.” Mona Simpson’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif. We took a long walk – something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers. I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter. I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco. Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful. I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying. Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day. That’s incredibly simple, but true. He was the opposite of absent-minded. He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be. Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day. That’s incredibly simple, but true. He was the opposite of absent-minded. He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.” Jawaharlal Nehru’s Eulogy for Mahatma Gandhi He has gone, and all over India there is a feeling of having been left desolate and forlorn. All of us sense that feeling, and I do not know when we shall be able to get rid of it. And yet together with that feeling there is also a feeling of proud thankfulness that it has been given to us of this generation to be associated with this mighty person. In ages to come, centuries and maybe millennia after us, people will think of this generation when this man of God trod on earth, and will think of us who, however small, could also follow his path and tread the holy ground where his feet had been. “In ages to come, centuries and maybe millennia after us, people will think of this generation when this man of God trod on earth, and will think of us who, however small, could also follow his path and tread the holy ground where his feet had been.” Martin Luther King’s Eulogy by Robert F. Kennedy Martin Luther King, the American civil rights leader and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, was born in Montgomery, Alabama. He rose to prominence in the civil rights movement of the 1950s, led the famous March on Washington in 1963, and the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. A brilliant orator and writer, whose insistence upon nonviolence in the Gandhian tradition accounted for the success of the movement, Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, by a white man. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of injustice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another” Barack Obama’s Eulogy for Sen. Ted Kennedy Mrs. Kennedy, Kara, Edward, Patrick, Curran, Caroline, members of the Kennedy family, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens: Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy. The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the U.S. Senate – a man whose name graces nearly one thousand laws, and who penned more than three hundred himself. But those of us who loved him, and ache with his passing, know Ted Kennedy by the other titles he held: Father. Brother. Husband. Uncle Teddy, or as he was often known to his younger nieces and nephews, “The Grand Fromage,” or “The Big Cheese.” I, like so many others in the city where he worked for nearly half a century, knew him as a colleague, a mentor, and above all, a friend. Ted Kennedy has gone home now, guided by his faith and by the light of those he has loved and lost. At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image – the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled; smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for what storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon. May God Bless Ted Kennedy, and may he rest in eternal peace. “But those of us who loved him, and ache with his passing, know Ted Kennedy by the other titles he held: Father. Brother. Husband. Uncle Teddy, or as he was often known to his younger nieces and nephews, “The Grand Fromage,” or “The Big Cheese.” I, like so many others in the city where he worked for nearly half a century, knew him as a colleague, a mentor, and above all, a friend.” All Return Again It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new strange disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is very well alive; nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go. Ralph Waldo Emerson K RAJARAM IRS 7424 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZop2wLssK9HCgYE5xRTKQsEFodkci%2B7MgzJX2Mc4SY4RRQ%40mail.gmail.com.
