Is this normal in a eulogy?

[LaLaLouella]

I attended a funeral recently of an old family friend. In her eulogy, which was delivered by the by the vicar and written by him in conjunction with her husband, they completely missed out a good 30 years of her life! According to them, she left school got a job and then reappeared as a 50 year old about to marry him with two adult children and a few grandchildren.

No mention at all of her first marriage or husband (30 years!), their divorce, having her children, no anecdotes from her career or life when she was young. Just schooldays and marriage to second husband and then stories about their retirement and grandchildren.

Is this normal? To erase so much of someone's life as it ended in divorce? I found it bizarre.

Did he know any anecdotes from her career or life when she was younger and before she knew him?

If it was written in conjunction with her current husband then that’s what he knew to talk about. Were her children not involved in writing the eulogy?

They're guided by the person who helps them write it, in this case her widower. I went to my DGran's funeral this month and it focussed on her life after her kids were born because that is what my aunt knows most about, although she did include what she could about Gran's life before her kids.

If her first marriage and the births of her children weren't mentioned at all, that's a little odd, I'd say, and not terribly respectful of her DC, who presumably were there too, but grief is a strange thing.

I'm in the funeral industry - it sounds like the paying client (in this case the 2nd husband?) specifically didn't want the first marriage mentioning. I'd say this is quite normal in such circumstances, albeit perhaps painful for those involved in the "missing years" that they have been omitted.

Despite what some may think about it being a service to honour the dead, funerals are just like anything else - whoever is paying for it gets what they want and the vicar/celebrant is there to conduct it as per the client's wishes. It gets slightly murkier if the deceased paid for a funeral plan themselves, but even then there is usually a next of kin client who essentially gets full control over proceedings

I'd find it very odd that it missed out her anything to do with her children.

It's fair enough if he didn't know any anecdotes from that time and her first marriage but to not mention that she had children during that time is very odd.

Did he not ask for help from her children to put together the eulogy?

That’s rather odd. I can see why it might gloss over her precious marriage but totally ignoring it is a bit much. Not great for her children

Yes, it is what was felt appropriate at the time. No need to dwell on her first marriage. Did it ended acrimoniously? We don't know.

My sister and I delivered the eulogy at our Dad's funeral earlier this year. It is a synopsis and a tribute, not a detailed biography.

You only have a few minutes during the service, especially if it is at a crematorium. There will be plenty that you just can't fit in so decisions have to be made about what to leave out.

Well if the primary mover behind it was someone who only met her aged 50, then it's hardly surprising, is it? I would have expected one of her children to either deliver a separate eulogy focusing on her as a mother, or to contribute to the writing of this one.

But in general, the eulogies I've heard have focused on how the person delivering knew the dead person. DH was asked to do one for his uncle a few years ago, and while he mentioned the fact that the uncle had been married and had lost both his wife and his child very young (long before DH was born), obviously it focused most on how and when DH knew him, which was mostly when the uncle was an older man who had returned to our home country.

Another point: Perhaps her first divorce ended very, very badly and she didn’t like it brought up in life, and wouldn’t have liked it brought up in death (I realise that is pure speculation on my part).

I've been to a service like this. Whole first marriage/kids not mentioned. I felt a bit sad for the "erased", as if they had been insignificant. I don't know the dynamics of the relationships however, so maybe it caused less pain to those suffering the most at the time?
I hope when my time comes I don't have similar happen. Even if I was in a new relationship my children (from current marriage) would never mean less.

If her own DC were not mentioned at all that seems very odd. Did the vicar not know she had children? Were they not at the funeral?

My aunt had one like this. It completely omitted her first marriage and her child from that marriage but went on for a good fifteen minutes talking about a childhood my mum didn’t recognise at all and how their dad would drive the train taking them out to the countryside. Their dad was not a train driver. It was very odd.

I felt a bit like this at a friends funeral, her husbands friend gave the eulogy, although there was no 30 year gap, as she had been married to the same husband for 40 or so years, but it was all from her husbands point of view, and more about him than her, it seemed strange, as her various jobs were hardly mentioned and her hobbies, music and art in all forms, and her lovely garden were completely ignored. It was mostly about her long illness, and how it had restricted their (his) travel ambitions, whereas she had resolutely not allowed it to stop her doing the things she wanted to do, up until the last year when she was wheelchair bound. I felt cheated on her behalf!
I wonder what your friends children made of it?

It was just such a jarring omission!

The first marriage did end badly, he was a total shit and they spent a good number of years hating each other. But then the grandkids arrived and they decided it was better for everyone if they got along and put it behind them.

The first husband was at the funeral to comfort their daughters and grandkids so they all sat there and listened to the marriage and childhoods be skipped over...

I wrote the eulogy for my father a few years ago; we had a humanist lead the "ceremony" - so I just wrote it and handed it over to the woman that would be reading it. I may have asked my sister (half sister, so not her father) if sh thought it was OK, can't remember).

I based it on the things in his life that my father loved talking about, although he was somewhat taciturn. It was actually quite sad that the things he loved chatting about (national service, working in night clubs as a bouncer, working on overnight sleeper trains) were all before he met my Mother & had children - age 23 - so 50+ years after that. But no help/guidance on what to include/exclude.

I was actually really proud of how much she'd managed to put the past behind her and focus on the future and how they were a family, despite everything. It showed real strength and class. She was a lovely lady...

@queenMab99 oh that would have made me cross! All about other people and nothing about her...

@Sn0tnose What? So a completely invented childhood?

How bizarre, I find funerals to be such strange events. All that grief, emotion, repression, rewriting of history... Do other cultures do this or is it just the British? (And yes, I am making some assumptions here)

It is very strange when a big chunk of someone's life is just missed out.

My DBs funeral is in a couple of weeks and I've no idea how his eulogy will go. Presumably we'll gloss over family politics and just talk about his kids and dogs.

Oddly my sister was almost completely missing from her wedding speeches. Second wedding, both in their fifties, her son did a little speech and then the groom's three, yes three, best men all did very dull speeches about fun times they'd had as kids and teens, with no mention of his new wife!

It was very odd, it's not like they were youngsters and they'd all been his best men at his previous wedding 30 years before so seemingly just rehashed it all.

I was tempted to pop up and remind them she was there but it had all dragged on so long with their either ironic or real misogyny plus a hint of racism that we all just wanted to flee the building.

My family are having a spate of deaths at the moment so I have a few more funerals to go to soon.

Sorry for everyone's losses.

@LaLaLouella

I attended a funeral recently of an old family friend. In her eulogy, which was delivered by the by the vicar and written by him in conjunction with her husband, they completely missed out a good 30 years of her life! According to them, she left school got a job and then reappeared as a 50 year old about to marry him with two adult children and a few grandchildren.

No mention at all of her first marriage or husband (30 years!), their divorce, having her children, no anecdotes from her career or life when she was young. Just schooldays and marriage to second husband and then stories about their retirement and grandchildren.

Is this normal? To erase so much of someone's life as it ended in divorce? I found it bizarre.

Maybe they didn't know much about this period?

If the marriage wasn't a good one I can see why it might have not been mentioned. But it probably would have been nice for the children to mention their childhood briefly.

My grandad was widowed after only 3 years of marriage when my dad was a toddler. He remarried after a couple of years and that lasted 50+ years and they then both died within a year of each other.

My dad delivered the eulogy for his dad and made no mention of my granddad's first wife, i.e. my dad's biological mother. He felt that his stepmother, who had been in his life for as long as he could remember should be the one honoured.

My mum and I felt it was a bit odd and sad to ignore his first wife but it was dad's choice.

I think there's often going to be the issue where the deceased's children/younger generations are responsible for gathering the memories, so of course, they won't have any actual recollection of what happened before their own lifetimes, apart from stories that have been passed down (which people sadly don't always think to do these days - I include myself in that).

I was recently responsible for arranging my DGM's funeral, but she was the last of her generation (and the one below) alive, so although I did my very best to gather the information and records that I could, I could not possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the first 50+ years of her life (well, 60+, really, as I was alive but obviously very young).

I can well understand wanting to skip over a toxic marriage, BUT not the children (and grandchildren) that resulted from it - that's just awful.

I remember on a previous thread about terrible funerals where the person giving the so-called eulogy made it all about his own new business and said very little about the actual person (his DP/PIL?) who had died.

I always remember my Mum telling me about her Aunt's (maybe Great Aunt's) funeral she went to, where the minister clearly hadn't bothered to do the most basic 1 minute of homework and kept referring to her throughout as 'he' and remembering 'his' life. I can only assume he had a generic set piece that he read at every single funeral with male pronouns printed as a default. What a horrible lack of care and respect at a service specifically arranged to sum up and 'round off' somebody's life.

At DH's funeral, the celebrant told me that I didn't have to include any reference to his first wife (very acrimonious split) but I didn't think it felt right to ignore that, so we agreed on a brief "in 1985 he married Sandra and their children were born in x and y, they separated in z and he met Viennese a few years later" sort of thing. She was there too and while she's not my favourite person, I couldn't bring myself to write her out of history, because she is my stepkids mum. But I could have ignored any part of his life if I'd wanted to, I had full editorial control over the eulogy from the celebrant.

I do get the "they write about the part of a persons life that they know" and so there tends to be a focus on the later part of the deceased's life. But still, I think anyone writing a eulogy can do a bit of research, ask other people for input...