Your relationship with him was complicated, and some of that belongs in the speech.

Almost everything published about eulogies assumes the dead person was loved simply. Most are not. A large share of the people who stand up at a funeral are standing up for someone who drank, or left, or was cruel in small daily ways nobody outside the house ever saw, or who was absent for thirty years and then died. If drink was the whole of it, a eulogy for a father who drank is the more specific page. If it is your mother rather than your father, a eulogy for a difficult mother is a different problem and has its own page.

If that is you, the paralysis is not writer’s block. You are holding two speeches. One is the warm one — devoted father, always there, will be missed by all — which you cannot read out loud because you would hear yourself lying to ninety people who might know better. The other is the true one, which would land like a dropped tray. So you write nothing.

There are four ways out, not two.

The four options, plainly

• one — declineYou are allowed to say no. It is a favour being asked, not a duty being enforced, and “I’m not the right person to speak” is a complete sentence that requires no justification. Nobody at the service will remember who did not speak. Say it today rather than Friday night, and offer something else instead — read a poem, carry the coffin, greet people at the door. If you are declining because you cannot get the words out, not because you do not want to, keep reading.
• two — narrow the subjectYou do not have to eulogise the whole man. You can eulogise one true, small, defensible part of him. He was a terrible father and a genuinely good mechanic; speak about the mechanic. Two minutes about the way he could hear what was wrong with an engine from the driveway is honest, specific, and not a lie by omission — it is a choice of subject. This is the option most people actually want and do not know is available.
• three — name it once, then moveOne sentence that acknowledges the truth, placed early, and then you go on to the material. Not a list of grievances. One sentence. It does two things: it stops you feeling like a fraud for the next four minutes, and it silently releases every other person in that room who is carrying the same thing.
• four — write it for yourself, and read something elseWrite the true version tonight. All of it. Do not soften anything. Then do not read it. Read the narrowed version at the service and keep the true one. This is not dishonesty; it is knowing the difference between a funeral and a reckoning. The funeral is for the room. The true one is yours.

The one sentence, if you take option three

It works when it is short, unspecific about the worst details, and delivered without apology. Say it at normal volume and keep going — do not pause for a reaction, because pausing invites one.

My father and I did not have an easy time of it. I am not going to stand here and tell you otherwise. What I want to tell you about is the part that was good, because it was real too.

for a father you loved unevenly

Some of you knew a version of my mother I never got. I have made peace with that. I am going to tell you about the woman I did know.

when other people in the room had it better

I did not know him well. That is the honest starting point, and it is the thing I am sorriest about today.

for an absent or estranged parent

He was not always kind. He was, at times, very funny, and he taught me to swim in a river in February, and I think both of those things are true at once.

when you want the truth carried inside a specific memory rather than stated

The lines to leave out

Not because they are untrue. Because a funeral is a room with no exit, and the people in it did not consent to hearing them: the diagnosis nobody has said out loud, what he did to your mother, the money, anything a sibling has asked you not to say, and any sentence that begins “the truth is” and then runs for a paragraph. If you find you have written those, you have written option four, and that is fine. Keep it. Read the other one.

What to do about the forgiveness question

You will feel pressure — from the room, from a hymn, from the sheer gravity of a coffin — to arrive at forgiveness by the last paragraph. You do not have to. A eulogy is not required to resolve. “I don’t know what to do with all of it yet” is a legitimate final position and a far better ending than a forgiveness you do not feel, which the room will hear as hollow because it is.

If you want one thing to aim the whole speech at, aim it here: say something specific enough that at least one person listening thinks yes, that was him. Specificity is what makes a eulogy land. It is also, conveniently, the only thing a complicated relationship gives you in abundance.

• Do I have to give a eulogy if I don’t want to?

  No. It is a favour being asked, not an obligation. “I’m not the right person to speak” is a complete answer and needs no justification. Say it early rather than the night before, and offer something else instead if you want to — a reading, carrying the coffin, greeting people.

• Can you write a eulogy for an abusive parent without lying?

  Yes. You do not have to eulogise the whole person. Choose a narrower, true subject — one part of them that was genuinely good — and speak only about that. Or acknowledge the difficulty in a single early sentence and then move to the material. Both are honest. Neither requires you to detail the harm in front of a room that cannot leave.

• What do I say in a eulogy for a father I barely knew?

  Start from the honest position: that you did not know him well, and that this is the thing you are sorriest about. Then use what you do have — the few concrete scenes you remember, what other people have told you, what you looked for in him. A short, true eulogy is better than a long, invented one.

• Is it okay to mention that the relationship was difficult?

  Yes, once, briefly, and early. A single unapologetic sentence acknowledging it stops you feeling like a fraud for the rest of the speech and quietly releases everyone else in the room carrying the same thing. What does not work is a list of grievances or any specific accusation.