Funeral QuestionsAsked to eulogise the estranged father I only reconnected with at the end
Asked by dustysprocket ·
Some of you might remember me from a thread a few months back about my father. I only really reconnected with him near the end, to sort out his affairs, after not speaking properly for close to fifteen years. He died last week. I made most of the funeral calls solo because that's how it had settled between us, best guess, no real instructions.
Now my aunt (his sister) has asked, gently but clearly expecting yes, whether I'll give the eulogy. I'm the only child. There's no one else it would obviously fall to unless she does it herself, and I think she wants me to specifically, because it's "what a son does."
Here's my actual problem: I don't have the eulogy in me. Not the warm one people expect at a funeral. Our relationship for most of my adult life was absent phone calls, a couple of ugly arguments in my twenties, and then a strange, businesslike few months at the end where we were cordial but not close. My aunt had a completely different relationship with him: she adored her brother, and I think whatever I say is going to sound thin next to what she's expecting, or next to what she'd say herself if she got up there.
Do I say no? Do I get up and say something true but small? I don't want to make his funeral about my issues with him, but I also don't want to stand up and lie for five minutes.
3 Replies
I've had this exact conversation with a family more times than you'd think. It's more common than people assume, just rarely talked about. A few things that might help you actually decide, rather than just feel stuck between two bad options.
First: you're allowed to say no, and it costs you nothing to at least consider it seriously before you answer your aunt. "I don't think I'm the right person to do this justice, but I'd love for you to speak, or I'm happy to say a few words afterwards" is a completely legitimate response. Plenty of families I've worked with have the closer, more sentimental relative give the main tribute while a more distant one contributes something shorter, or nothing spoken at all. Nobody in the chapel does the maths on why.
Second, if you do want to say something (and it sounds like part of you does, or you wouldn't be agonising over the wording rather than the yes/no), you don't need five warm minutes. Three or four honest sentences, delivered steadily, land better than a stretched tribute that doesn't ring true. Something like: "Dad and I didn't have an easy relationship for a long time. In his last months we found our way back to something, and I'm grateful we had that, even if it came late." That's not a lie, and it isn't an attack either. It's true, and rooms full of mourners are generally much more forgiving of honesty than families expect.
Third, and this is the part I'd gently flag, your aunt having a different, warmer relationship doesn't obligate you to match her tone. Two people can speak about the same man and say completely different true things. If she gives a loving tribute and yours is shorter and more guarded, that's not a betrayal of him or a disappointment to the room, it's just two honest accounts sitting side by side. There's more on working through exactly this in writing a eulogy for a difficult or estranged relationship, including what to do if you land on genuinely nothing to say. That's a real, valid outcome too, not a moral failure.
Adding to what brisk_pelican7 said, because I think there's a feeling underneath your question worth naming directly: you're weighing something bigger than whether to speak, whether your version of your father is allowed to exist next to your aunt's. It is. Grief for a complicated parent often carries both the sadness of the loss and the grief for the relationship you didn't get to have, and those can sit in the same chest without cancelling out.
Whatever you decide about the eulogy itself, it might help to talk this through with someone before the day (a friend, a GP, or a grief counsellor), not because there's anything wrong with how you're handling it, but because deciding what to say (or whether to say anything) is a lot lighter with another person than turning it over alone the night before. GriefLine and Grief Australia both have free lines if you want to talk it through with someone outside the family.
Different flavour of the same problem here. I was estranged from most of my family and ended up organising my dad's funeral essentially alone, so nobody was even asking me to perform a closeness I didn't feel. In a strange way that was easier than what you're facing. You've got a relative who loved him without complication watching you try to conjure the same thing, which is its own specific pressure mine didn't have.
One thing that might take some heat off: you don't have to decide today. I know your aunt's expecting an answer, but "let me think about the best way to do this properly for him" buys you a day or two without committing either way. Sometimes the shape of it becomes clearer once you're not answering under someone's direct, hopeful gaze.
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