Eulogy for a Parent You Had a Complicated Relationship With

you’re grieving two things at once

if you’re here, you’re probably stuck on a blank page trying to write something true about a parent who hurt you, disappointed you, or just never quite showed up the way you needed. and the grief is weirder than people warned you about. you’re not only grieving the person who died — you’re grieving the relationship you never got to have with them. both of those are real. both of them get to be in the room.

most “how to write a eulogy” guides assume you loved your parent cleanly and you’re just looking for nice words. this isn’t that. this is for the people standing at a podium thinking what am i even supposed to say. i’ve written one of these and helped others through it, and the good news is there’s a way to do it that is honest, kind to the people listening, and kind to you — without forcing you to either canonize someone who didn’t earn it or air the family laundry in front of cousins you barely know.

here’s how.

the one rule: you don’t have to lie, and you don’t have to confess

write this on a sticky note before you start. a complicated eulogy fails in two opposite directions:

• the fairy tale — you stand up and describe a saint nobody recognizes. the people who knew the truth feel gaslit, and you feel like a fraud.
• the reckoning — you use the mic to settle the score. it might feel powerful for ninety seconds and it will haunt you for years.

the target is in between: selective, true, and generous. you choose which true things to say. omission is not lying. a funeral is not a deposition — you are under no obligation to give the whole testimony. you only have to not say things you know are false.

step 1: decide who this eulogy is actually for

it is not for your parent. they’re gone. it’s not the place to finish your unfinished business with them — that’s what therapy, a letter you burn, or a quiet visit to the grave is for.

the eulogy is for the living people in the chairs. some of them loved this person uncomplicatedly. some of them are as torn up as you are. your job is to give that whole room something they can hold onto without making any of them feel erased. once you accept that the eulogy has a job — comfort the room — the pressure to “tell your truth” gets a lot quieter, because that’s a different task happening on a different day.

step 2: find the true-but-kind throughline

you need one honest thread to hang everything on. dig for something real, even if it’s small or sideways. ask yourself:

• what did they actually do well, even once? (worked brutal hours, could fix anything, made the best soup, told a story that made strangers laugh)
• what did i learn because of them — including the hard lessons? (“she taught me how to stand up for myself, mostly by being someone i had to stand up to” is honest and a lot of people will quietly nod.)
• what did other people get from them that i maybe didn’t? a coworker, a neighbor, a grandchild often saw a side you didn’t. it’s okay to honor that side specifically.
• what’s a true contradiction? “he was hard to live with and impossible to forget” is a real sentence. complicated people make great eulogy subjects because they’re contradictory.

you’re not looking for a verdict on their whole life. you’re looking for one true throughline you can say out loud and not feel sick.

step 3: the complicated-relationship phrasebook

these are honest phrases that tell the truth at an angle, so you neither lie nor overshare:

• “our relationship was complicated, and i think anyone who knew us both knows that. so i want to talk about what was real.”
• “he wasn’t a simple man, and i won’t pretend he was.”
• “she did the best she could with what she had — and what she had was not a lot.”
• “we didn’t always understand each other. but i understood that she was shaped by things that happened long before me.”
• “i’m still sorting out a lot of what passed between us. today isn’t the day i finish that. today i just want to mark that he was here, and that he mattered — to me and to plenty of you.”
• “i learned resilience from him. some of it i learned the hard way. all of it i’m keeping.”

notice none of these accuse, and none of these pretend. that’s the whole craft.

step 4: a structure that holds up under pressure

use this skeleton. it’s short on purpose — 3 to 5 minutes is plenty.

1. open with honesty (1–2 sentences). name, relationship, and a quiet acknowledgment that it was complicated. this earns instant trust from the room.
2. the throughline (2–3 sentences). the true thing from step 2.
3. one concrete moment or detail. a single specific scene beats ten adjectives. specificity is what makes a eulogy feel earned instead of generic.
4. what you’re keeping / what you learned. turn the complicated into something forward-looking.
5. a clean close. a simple wish — rest, peace, goodbye. you don’t have to say “i forgive you” if you don’t mean it. “rest now” is enough.

free fill-in template

copy this, fill the brackets, read it out loud, cut anything that feels false:

“[name] was my [father/mother]. our relationship was [complicated / not simple], and i think most of you know that, so i’m not going to pretend otherwise.

what i can tell you honestly is this: [one true good thing — a skill, a habit, a thing they gave you or others]. i remember [one specific moment or detail], and that’s stayed with me.

[name] was shaped by [hardship / their own history], and i think that explains a lot of [the hard parts]. i didn’t always understand it growing up. i understand more now.

what i’m keeping from [him/her] is [a lesson, a trait, a value — even a hard-won one]. [optional: and i’m leaving the rest where it belongs.]

rest now, [name]. [goodbye / we’ll take it from here / thank you for what you could give].”

read it twice. the second read is where you catch the lines that aren’t true for you and swap them.

if you want that filled in for your specific situation in a couple minutes instead of staring at brackets at 1am, the Obituary & Eulogy Writer is built exactly for this — you answer a few honest prompts (including “it was complicated, here’s how”), and it drafts a respectful eulogy you can read and edit. it doesn’t force a fairy tale; it works with the messy version.

step 5: what to leave out (a short list)

• specific abuse, affairs, addictions, or money fights — unless the deceased was openly public about recovery and the family wants it named. the podium is not the place to disclose a secret on someone’s behalf.
• score-settling jokes. they always read as bitter on the day, even if the room laughs.
• anything you’d regret if it ended up on the internet. eulogies travel.
• comparisons (“unlike how he treated me, he was good to…”). keep the contrast inside you, not pointed at a person in the third row.

step 6: surviving the actual delivery

• print it big. 16–18pt. your hands may shake.
• mark a breath with a slash before lines you know will catch in your throat.
• give yourself an out. tell one trusted person they can step up and finish reading if you can’t. having the safety net usually means you won’t need it.
• it’s okay to cry, and it’s okay not to. neither one means you loved them more or less.

a short worked example

“my dad, ray, was not an easy man, and our relationship wasn’t an easy one. i think he’d actually appreciate me saying that instead of dressing it up. what was true about ray is that he never quit a job and never let a broken thing stay broken — i watched him fix a neighbor’s furnace in a snowstorm for nothing. i learned how to work from him, and honestly, i learned how to forgive from him too, because it took me a long time and he gave me a lot to practice on. ray was dealt a rough hand early, and he carried it his whole life. i’m setting the heavy parts down today and keeping the work ethic. rest now, dad.”

that’s honest. nobody got lied to. nobody got ambushed. and the writer can live with it.

if the words just won’t come — that’s not a character flaw, it’s grief plus a hard history, and it’s exactly the moment a tool helps. the Obituary & Eulogy Writer gives you a finished, honest draft in minutes so you can spend your energy getting through the day instead of fighting a blank page. you stay in control of every word; it just gets you off zero.

you can do this. true, kind, and short beats perfect every time.