Help me write a eulogy for someone I loved. I want it to sound like THEM and like ME, not a funeral template.
WHO: {name + relationship_to_me}
AGE AT PASSING: {age}
WHAT I WANT THE AUDIENCE TO LEAVE FEELING: {grateful / nostalgic / laughing-through-tears / quiet}
WHO WILL BE LISTENING: {family + age range + religious context}
5-7 SPECIFIC MEMORIES OR DETAILS — be messy, don't pre-edit: {paste — small things, weird things, sentences they said, smells, habits}
WHAT THEY ARE KNOWN FOR / KNOWN AS: {profession + reputation + nicknames}
WHAT YOU WISH MORE PEOPLE KNEW ABOUT THEM: {the thing eulogies usually miss}
MY EMOTIONAL CAPACITY: {will I cry through it? can I make it through 4 minutes?}
LENGTH: {minutes spoken aloud — usually 4-6}
RULES:
- Open with a specific scene, not 'today we gather to remember'.
- One real laugh in the first 90 seconds. Grief and laughter live next to each other; don't separate them.
- The body should be 2-3 memories that 'show' the person, not 'tell' me they were great.
- Resist the trap of listing achievements — anyone could read a résumé.
- A 30-second turn where you acknowledge the hard part of who they were — eulogies that pretend everyone was perfect feel hollow. Be loving here, not exposing.
- Final 30 seconds: one promise to them, or one line you wish you'd said in person.
- Plain, warm language. No 'we are gathered to celebrate the life of'.
Also give me 3 sentences I can cut if I'm running over time, and 2 places I can pause if I need to breathe.0 copies·0 saves·4 views
271 words·1,505 chars
Sample output
Subject: my dad, John, 71. Audience: ~80 people, mixed family, secular service. Memories: he kept every receipt in shoeboxes; he hummed in supermarkets and didn't know he was doing it; he taught me to drive at 14 in an empty parking lot; he sent me $20 in birthday cards even when I was 35; he was bad at hugs but learned, late; he disappeared into the garage when he didn't know what to say. Known as: union electrician. The thing more people should know: he wrote poems no one ever saw. Capacity: I'll cry, I want to get through 4 min.
Eulogy (~4 min spoken)
When I was 14, my dad took me to a Sears parking lot at 6am to teach me to drive. He didn't say anything for the first 20 minutes. He just nodded every time I did something right. Eventually I stalled the car six times in a row and he turned to me and said, very seriously, 'You're terrible at this.' And then he laughed. That was him. He could hold both things at once — telling you the truth, and letting you know he was on your side anyway.
[pause]
If you knew my dad, you knew the receipts. Two shoeboxes, top shelf of the garage closet, going back to 1987. He kept receipts for things he hadn't owned in thirty years. Toasters. Tires. A copy of Field & Stream. When my mom asked him why, he said, 'In case.' We never figured out what 'in case' meant. We never asked. The shoeboxes were a love language. He was the kind of man who needed proof that things had happened — that we'd had them, that they'd mattered.
Most of you know him as Big John — the electrician, the guy who could fix anything in the neighborhood. The guy who showed up. Forty-three years on the same job. But there's a thing about him I don't think a lot of you know.
He wrote poems. Short ones. In a notebook he kept in the garage drawer with the spare fuses. I found them after he passed. I don't think he ever showed anyone. They're plain, careful, kind — exactly like him. Most are about my mom. One is about a dog we had in 1991. None of them are good in the way the literary world counts good. All of them are great in the way that matters.
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FAQ
Read it out loud to one person who knew the deceased. If they cry, it's done. If they say 'that's nice,' something specific is still missing. The prompt targets Claude Opus and lives in the Writing & Content category on mycopyprompt.
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[pause]
My dad was not always easy. He disappeared into the garage when he didn't know what to say, and sometimes he didn't come out for hours. He wasn't a hugger. He learned, late, after I left for college — he started ending phone calls with 'love you' the way other people clear their throat. He got better. He kept getting better.
That's what I want to remember. He kept getting better. He didn't have to. Most men his age didn't bother. He did.
[pause]
Dad — the $20 will keep coming, you'd be proud to know. I'll mail one to your shoebox every birthday I have left. I just wanted to tell you, in front of everyone, that I noticed. I noticed every single one. I always have.
Thank you for the parking lot. Thank you for the shoeboxes. Thank you for the poems we'll find for the rest of our lives.
I love you. I'll see you in the garage.
Cut if running long:
Pause points: after the parking lot story (set up the rest of the room), and right before the final 'Dad —' sentence. Look up. Take a breath. Let the room breathe with you.