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.

I wouldn’t want mention of my ex husband in my funeral. His was (and most likely still is) an abusive arsehole. We didn’t have children though.

@SprayedWithDettol

I wouldn’t want mention of my ex husband in my funeral. His was (and most likely still is) an abusive arsehole. We didn’t have children though.

And that's your decision and completely understandable....

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.

Why on earth should it have to be either/or, though? Both women played very significant parts in his life - just one had the chance to do so for far, far longer (and couldn't have done that had the other not originally done her part).

Would his stepmother really be offended at his acknowledging his 'first' mother, before circumstances meant that she was sadly gone very soon and then the 'second' mother stepped into the role? Surely there would be no possible cause for jealousy or competition, when the reason for the marriage ending was a death?

Obviously, I don't know all the circumstances and family dynamics, but I'd like to think that, if I were the stepmother in that scenario, I would actively want my stepchild's mother to never be forgotten - and most definitely mentioned with love at her widower's funeral.

It happened to my DHs mum. The vicar didn't mention her life before she met her second husband, including not even mentioning my husband, her only son! This was because the vicar only spoke to her husband's family, and my DH was too distraught to get involved or complain.

The minister can only deliver what they’re given. If the person organising the funeral omits a load of information there isn’t much they can do.

When my fil remarried they did this!

It was so sad as his two adult children were there with all of us family and they didn’t even get a mention. Fil and step mil had initially met at university, had separate successful lives and careers, he had been married with children (but my Dhs mum died unexpectedly very young) but they made it seem like it was university then just getting married 40 years later! I hated it.

This happened to me when my dad died. My 'dear' step mum told the vicar that she didn't want my mum or me mentioned during the eulogy. It was horrible.

@LaLaLouella

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...

Do you understand how busy ministers are? It’s not an episode of who do you think you are? Where they have time to find long lost relatives and uncover witty anecdotes.

Ministers often do 2 or 3 funerals a week on top of a lot of other work. The person organising the funeral gives them the information and they write a eulogy from that information.

'Do you understand how busy ministers are? It’s not an episode of who do you think you are? Where they have time to find long lost relatives and uncover witty anecdotes.*

She didn't mean the ministers, she obviously meant the family member who is writing the eulogy.

@PinkWaferBiscuit

'Do you understand how busy ministers are? It’s not an episode of who do you think you are? Where they have time to find long lost relatives and uncover witty anecdotes.*

She didn't mean the ministers, she obviously meant the family member who is writing the eulogy.

But the eulogy was written and delivered by the minister and the family member. The direction has come from the family member.

That’s how this works. Whoever speaks to the minister controls the narrative.

My grandmother's had a line in it that she always used - she'd been married for over 60 years "just not to the same man" - now that's how to reference the unhappy first marriage

My uncle had MS for over 20 years before he died. If you'd never met him but heard his eulogy you'd think he was still happily married and playing football in a 5 a side every week, rather than spending twenty years in a wheelchair and the last 10 unable to talk being fed through a tube in a hospital bed in his parents front room. It felt very weird at the time to hear it.

The celebrant that wrote my mother's asked a whole bunch of questions and then gave us examples of language she could use to say stuff directly or indirectly, and remembering my uncle's - we went for direct.

That’s how this works. Whoever speaks to the minister controls the narrative.

We all know this. What they were suggesting was why that person couldn't speak to other family members especially the persons own children to get these anecdotes.

No one can know everything about a person so it's hardly unreasonable to think the person tasked with giving the information talks to others to get a full picture before going to the minister.

I find it very weird when bits of the deceased life are airbrushed out. DH gave a lovely eulogy at FIL's funeral - FIL died of alcoholism and for the final 5 years of his life wasn't the person he'd been for the 50 years prior, and it was very sad. DH touched on it by noting how happy he was to see people there who had known his dad 'in his prime' etc. It's very possible to acknowledge other parts of a person's life without detracting from the happy narrative.

In decades and centuries past, people would have lived and stayed locally in one small community, with the minister/vicar/priest frequently being at the centre of it - and thus having known the deceased person very well when the time came to pay tribute to their life.

These days, people move so much and far fewer people go to church regularly or are as 'active' in their local communities, all the minister has to go on when conducting the funeral service for somebody they never/barely knew is what the family tell him/her.

No one can know everything about a person so it's hardly unreasonable to think the person tasked with giving the information talks to others to get a full picture before going to the minister.

That’s fair. I can imagine family politics are at play here and unfortunately this is the result.

Why on earth should it have to be either/or, though? Both women played very significant parts in his life - just one had the chance to do so for far, far longer (and couldn't have done that had the other not originally done her part). I totally agree. As I say my mum and I both thought it was odd and queried it but dad was certain it was the way he wanted to go.

Would his stepmother really be offended at his acknowledging his 'first' mother, before circumstances meant that she was sadly gone very soon and then the 'second' mother stepped into the role? Surely there would be no possible cause for jealousy or competition, when the reason for the marriage ending was a death? My step-grandmother (who I never thought of as a "step") died before my grandad but, no I don't think at all she would have expected or wanted to have my biological grandmother left out which makes it all odder.

I think that would be quite usual in those circumstances.

Eulogies are going to focus on the highlights of a life as the writer sees them, as they are personal memories. They differ from obituaries which cover the whole life.

This happened at my grandfathers funeral.

We all adored his first wife (Grandma). She was mother to all his children and a lovely Grandmother - They were together for decades and did some truly wonderful things together that should have been celebrated. Grandma died adoring her husband and not knowing that he had been having an affair with the OW for years.

When he died it was like he had been walking in the unknown wilderness until he 'found' the the OW and married the 'love of his life'. Nothing in his life before that moment was worth mentioning.

I am forever grateful that the family chose not to attend as the disrespect to their whole life together and the absence of their mother from his life story would have been very hurtful

(I only went as the 'representative' at the families request to have someone there )

It is really hard to get eulogies right. I've met the son no one mentioned at the crematorium five minutes before the service. I've had the beloved partner of twenty years sat all alone on a pew and completely unacknowledged by the family. I've met the adopted children at the committal who didn't go to the church service as they felt unwelcome by the biological family. As the vicar I do what I can but I'm not a mind reader and I can only work with the material I'm given.

Usually when I go to see a family I draw a family tree as that makes sure I know who every is and I might get a comment about there being another child/brother/sister that the family don't get on with. Ultimately if they don't want to tell me there is nothing I can do. I had someone try and throw himself into a grave once. No idea who he was but my guess is a first husband.

Sometimes I do ask if there is a friend or neighbour I can talk to who knew mum well but as all the family can tell me is that she baked a great cake and loved her children. Her best fried will know her as Gladys with the wicked sense of humour who could loved hard boiled deceive fiction and was a bit of a flirt during the war. However the family is remembering mum and not Gladys.

When I'm given stuff to read by the family in the eulogy slot I make it really clear that this is what I'm reading and that the people present will have their memories which they will be able to share at the wake at the Dog and Ferret or wherever. If I clock that there is a major omission I will try and weave it into the prayers but I'm not Miss Maple.

Sometimes there are gaps because not much is known about that part of someone's life.

I went to one recently where the deceased had written his own eulogy (so helpful for the celebrant when there isn't much family left!). It did cover his whole life, but there was a lot in it about his military service, which was actually only the first five years of his adulthood, just post-war. It was obviously very important to him.

@Sn0tnose What? So a completely invented childhood?

Pretty much. It was written by her daughter from her second marriage and she’d asked my mum about bits and pieces to do with their childhood but obviously decided not to use it. We came to the conclusion that my aunt had misrepresented large parts of her life (not beyond the realms of possibility) and her daughter had just decided to go along with it. There were some very confused glances exchanged. Absolutely no idea why she’d claim their dad was a train driver though.

I was at my grandads funeral with my aunt and they complete ignored the existence of her and my dad and obviously us grandchildren too. It was the weirdest and most upsetting thing :( the vicar came to talk to us after as we had been visibly sad through the funeral and she was mortified she didn’t know this whole side of my grandads life because his second wife hadn’t shared any of it.

When we were helping a humanist write a eulogy for my brother my parents wanted to completely miss out the part that he had been married. They also wanted to gloss over the last ten years of his life. Ideally stopping back when he had a great job and travelled the world.
It would have been awful if that had been it, most people sat there knew he was an alcoholic and died in awful circumstances. I thought it was dishonest to my brother's memory to miss it all out. Obviously we didn't labour the point or go into details but it would have felt very wrong to have pretended none of what led to his death had happened.

I went to a funeral like this! A colleague of mine got married to a man who had been her teenage sweetheart, they were both in their 60's. Sadly he developed cancer and died about 6 months after the wedding. he had had a happy first marriage, but had been widowed when his first wife died of M.S. The funeral address was all about them finding love at an advanced age, how wonderful he had been to her grown up children from her first marriage (hers ended in divorce) and no mention at all of his long career in public service, his first wife or their two distraught daughters who were horrified to hear no mention of them or their mother. I had to comfort them outside the church as they were so upset. My colleague did ask me later if she had bee right to concentrate the funeral on their life together, I'm afraid I chickened out of saying what I thought but said that when I went to a funeral I did like to hear about the parts of the deceased's life that I didn't already know about. i can still recall her adult son, very dressed up and looking self important walking behind the coffin when his daughters were just sitting in the pews like everyone else there. Grim.

I've always believed that it's important to include different parts of people's lives at a funeral. It can be a beautiful thing to hear about other people's experiences of that person, or what they did as a young person or at a time when you didn't personally know them.

I've written a few eulogies and have approached people for their impressions. It's part of their grieving process and has been much welcomed by participants at the funeral.

Ignoring a whole part of someone's life, including their children's childhood is weird and can be very hurtful.