Examples
Eulogy examples you can actually read
Most writing services describe their work. Here is the work itself — six complete pieces, not excerpts, so you can judge the writing before you spend anything.
Why these people never existed
Everything below was written for invented families. We promise every client that their tribute is never published, never used as an example and never shown to anyone — and a promise you break for your own marketing is not a promise. So rather than ask grieving families for permission to display their words, we wrote these from scratch to the same standard and at the same lengths you would receive.
A eulogy for a grandmother
Opening · 750-word tier
My grandmother measured flour with a teacup and time in cups of tea. Forty-one years at the same kitchen table, and not one of us ever arrived without being fed, whatever the hour and whatever we had done.
She was not a sentimental woman. When my grandfather died she washed up, dried her hands, and said right, and then she kept the garden going for nineteen more years because he had planted it. That was how she grieved. Quietly, and by keeping things alive.
We used to tease her about the biscuit tin that was never biscuits. Buttons, mostly. A spare key to a house she sold in 1987. It is on the table at the back of this room today, and I can tell you now that it is still not biscuits.
Notice there is no list of virtues. One object — a teacup — carries the whole character, and the last line gives the room permission to laugh.
An obituary
Complete · 198 words · $39 tier
MARGARET ELLEN HOLLOWAY (née Pryce)
1943 – 2026
Margaret Holloway died peacefully at home on 2 September 2026, aged 83, with her daughters beside her.
Born in Swansea and raised above her parents' grocer's shop, Margaret trained as a nurse at St Mary's and worked on the children's ward there for thirty-two years. Colleagues remember a woman who knew every child's name and most of their grandmothers'.
She married Thomas Holloway in 1968. They moved to Hereford in 1974 and she never again lived more than a mile from a river, which she said was the only thing she missed about Wales.
Margaret is survived by her daughters, Ruth and Catherine, her son-in-law David, four grandchildren, and her sister Eira. She was predeceased by Thomas in 2007.
Her allotment, worked for thirty years, will be taken on by her granddaughter Alice, who has been warned about the raspberries.
A service of thanksgiving will be held at St Peter's Church, Hereford, on Friday 19 September at 11am. All who knew her are welcome. Family flowers only; donations if desired to the children's ward at St Mary's.
Written to a 200-word newspaper limit. Every fact a notice must carry is here — and one sentence about the allotment that no template would have known to include.
A short memorial tribute
Complete · 221 words · about two minutes aloud
I want to say something short, because Dad would have wanted something short.
He was a bricklayer for forty-four years, and he had a bricklayer's view of language: say the thing, then stop. When I phoned to tell him I was getting married he said — and I want to get this right — he said "good", and then asked whether I had looked at the roof yet.
What I want you to know about him is this. In 1998 our neighbour Jim had a stroke, and for eleven years my father walked next door every single morning at seven and made him a cup of tea. He never mentioned it. Not once, to anyone. We found out at Jim's funeral, from Jim's son, and when I asked him about it in the car afterwards he looked out of the window and said it was only a cup of tea.
It was not only a cup of tea. It was eleven years of mornings.
He would be embarrassed that I have told you. He would say I was making a fuss. But he is not here to stop me, and I have been waiting a long time to say it out loud.
Thank you for coming. He would have said that too, and then he would have put the kettle on.
For a graveside or a wake, where two minutes is the whole slot. It holds one memory properly rather than four badly.
An elegy poem
Complete · 142 words · $49 tier
For Eileen, who swam until October
She was always cold.
Cardigan in August,
hands round the cup
for the warmth, not the tea.
And yet every morning
she walked to the water
and went in to her shoulders
and came out laughing
like something had been settled.
We never understood it.
We stood on the shingle
holding her towel
and her watch
and her small brown shoes,
keeping them warm,
which was all she ever let us do.
Now the tide comes up
the same as it did.
The cold is just the cold.
Nobody goes in.
But some mornings, early,
I take my tea to the window
and hold the cup
with both hands
until it stops being warm,
and that is where she is.
Free verse, no rhyme, short lines — written so a fifteen-year-old could read it aloud without stumbling. The brief said only: she loved the sea, and she was always cold.
A tribute poem
Complete · 71 words · for a birthday in heaven
You always answered on the first ring,
as though you had been sitting by it,
as though whoever it was,
you were glad.
It is your birthday.
I have nobody to call
who would pick up that fast.
So I am saying it here instead,
out loud, into a quiet kitchen:
happy birthday, Mum.
I know. I know you are glad.
You always were, before I even spoke.
The brief was one sentence: "She always answered the phone on the first ring, like she had been waiting." That is genuinely enough to work from.
Three condolence messages
All three · for a colleague whose father died
Simple. Sarah, I was so sorry to hear about your father. I am thinking of you and your family this week, and there is no rush on anything here. Take whatever time you need.
More personal. Sarah, I was so sorry to hear about your dad. You mentioned once that he taught you to drive in a car park on Sunday mornings, and I have thought about that several times since Tuesday. What a thing to have been given. Thinking of you all.
More reflective. Sarah — I know the messages will have slowed down by now, and that this part is often harder than the first week. I have no advice and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I am just here, and I will be here in a month too. Whenever you want a coffee and a conversation about nothing at all, say the word.
One brief, three tones — so you choose by feel rather than start from nothing. Most people send the second and keep the third for a fortnight later, when everyone else has gone quiet.
Yours will not sound like these
These were written for people who never lived. Yours will be written for someone who did — from the details only you can give us.