How To Write a Eulogy For Your Mother: Saying Good Bye Gracefully
My mother died eight weeks ago. She was six weeks short of celebrating the beginning of her 92nd year of life. A stroke two weeks previously took the last thing remaining things she had, her memory and the ability to speak her mind, which she had frequently and without encouragement, done most of her life. Now I had to speak for her and about her. I had to write a eulogy. I was at a loss for words.
For almost two years before she died it felt like we were experiencing the terrible teenage years. This had NOT been a problem when I was an actual teenager. Why was she suddenly the one behaving like the teenager? Now, in my mid 60’s I felt like we were at war. She was angry with me most of the time. I didn’t know why and she wasn’t going to tell me. She might tell everyone else but not me.
Our conversations were strained. I would go on and on, verbal diarrhea, on every topic I could thing of, hoping to strike a chord with her that would get more than a one word answer. She would cry if I didn’t visit and be angry when I did. I spent the last 72 hours of her life on earth, awake and by her bedside. She only asked for my sister.
Then she was gone.
I had struggled for days, knowing the end was near, but not having the loving words I needed. The right words to say when the time came to honor my mother. I was angry and bereft. Time had run out. And I had a eulogy to write.
When my father died eight years before, words flew onto the page that I would read from to those who came to mourn him. He was kind and I knew he loved me. Two nights before he died we spent the night talking and saying all the things we wanted to say and remember about each other. His eulogy wrote itself.
Not so with Mom.
Finding the Words for a Eulogy
I was staying in a local hotel during the time between her death and her funeral. A holiday had intervened. This pushed the time out by a week before the burial and celebration of her life could be scheduled. Other family members were coming in from out of town. With my home now being almost 3 hours away, it just made sense to stay put in a hotel with those family members.
In my room at night I would sit down to write but had no idea what to say. I was now the one who was angry. The things I wanted to say were NOT what people expect to hear at a funeral. My first thought? Maybe I just shouldn’t speak….OR maybe I could find a pre-written eulogy on line….kind thoughts about a mother from a loving daughter. While there are such things on the internet it wouldn’t work for me. These had to be words from my heart AND I was speaking not only for myself but for my siblings.
There is a serious age gap between my three much younger siblings and me, the oldest child. What did we have in common that I could tell about our mother that would resonate with them as well? What had Mom shared with my brother, 15 years my junior, that she may have also shared with me? And my sisters? We were all almost a generation apart !
That week we spent many hours, my sisters and brother, my kids and their kids, and me, eating meals together, sharing stories and tears, just catching up on each other’s lives after several years apart. It was during these times that it came to me. I knew what I had to say.
Remembering What Was Important
First I spoke about death and the fact that there is never enough time. It runs out before everything can be said and done, between the person dying and those left behind. I gave expamples of the things we hadn’t finished, things my mom still planned on doing and things she and I had left undone and unsaid. But, I concluded. the things about deth is that it can’t take away the time we did have with her, the time that really counted, the time that made my siblings and me who we are today.
Mom was tough, very strong and principled. We all knew she loved us but we all knew the rules. As she was laid to rest, I told the mourners, I wanted her to know the rules still lived with us. I shared those rules with them. Good rules to live by. I wanted Mom to know that her death would not take the foundation she had laid, away from us. We wouldn’t forget her because these rules lived on, making us her living legacy.
So dear readers, my point is: Be still and think about what you want to remember, what you want others to remember about her. That is where you start the eulogy for your mother. The basis of what you will say most likely will represent the love she had for you in her heart . You will not see it until you clear away all the Sturm und Drang,the clutter, and emotional BS, that may have accumulated over the years.
What everyone needed to hear and what I needed to say, was what that woman, our mother, had given us, what would live on with us. Her rules represented her. It was there all the time.
To write a eulogy you just need to listen. Your mother will write it for you.