Everyone in that room believes the person who loved you most has died.

There is a version of the difficult parent that the world will hear. A father who drank, a father who left, a father who was cold for forty years. Say any of it at a lectern and ninety people nod. They have seen that film. If drink was the whole of it, a eulogy for a father who drank is the closer page.

A difficult mother has no such film. Say she was cruel and the room does not hear a fact. It hears an accusation, and it decides something about you rather than about her. That is the actual obstacle at your kitchen table tonight, and it is worth naming before you write a word.

You are not blocked. You are outnumbered.

What she probably did, and why it is invisible

A hard father is usually remembered for what he withheld. A hard mother is usually remembered for what she supplied too much of, which is why nobody outside the house can see the damage. Most of the people reading this recognise one of four shapes.

• the one who criticised as a form of careYour weight, your hair, your husband, your job, the way you raise your own children. Every line delivered as concern, which meant you could never object without looking ungrateful. Her friends will tell you today that she was so proud of you, and they will be telling the truth about what she said to them.
• the martyrShe gave up everything and the ledger was read back to you monthly. Nothing was ever a gift, because a gift cannot be invoiced. You spent thirty years paying interest on being born.
• the one who needed you to be the parentYou managed her moods from the age of nine. You told her it was fine. You were the one who was fine, and you have been fine ever since, and you are not fine.
• the one who chose someone over youA man, a sibling, a church, a bottle. She knew and she stayed. That is the one that people find hardest to hear said aloud, and it is also the most common.

None of that is a speech. It is the material underneath the speech, and the point of writing it down tonight is that unnamed material leaks. It comes out as a flat voice, or a two-minute eulogy about her cooking. Or a sentence you never planned, arriving at the lectern anyway.

What the room already believes

Assume, going in, that most of the ninety people liked her. Difficult mothers are frequently excellent in public — funny, warm, generous with other people’s children. The gap between the woman they knew and the woman you knew is not evidence that you are wrong. It is the specific reason this is hard.

So the room is not neutral. It arrives believing you are the chief mourner, and it will read everything you say against that belief. A warm eulogy will be heard as warmth. A flat one will be heard as shock. Only something deliberate gets heard as what it is.

The sentence that does most of the work

You do not need a paragraph of truth. You need one sentence, placed early, that tells the room the speech it is about to hear is not the standard one. After it, you can be as generous as you honestly can. None of it reads as a lie, because you have already told them you are not lying.

My mother was not an easy woman, and I am not going to stand here and make her into one. She would have hated that more than any of you.

Best if she had a reputation for bluntness. It converts honesty into loyalty.

Some of you knew my mother as a friend. That was a good deal, and I am glad you had it. Being her daughter was a different job, and I did it for fifty-one years.

Says everything and accuses no one. Nobody can argue with the word job.

There is a lot I could say about my mother that would not belong in a church. What belongs is this: she was extraordinary and she was very hard to live with, and both of those were true on the same afternoon.

The strongest version if you want the truth on the record without the detail.

Notice what none of those do. They do not list an incident, name a diagnosis, or ask the room to take a side. A funeral cannot hold a case for the prosecution, and attempting one is the fastest way to make the day about you.

Honest is a temperature, not a quantity.

Then say the true good things, and only those

Having bought yourself credibility, spend it. Find two things about her that were genuinely admirable and that you would say to her face. Not virtues — capabilities. Difficult women are often formidable, and formidable is easy to describe and impossible to fake.

• what she was frighteningly good atArguing with a hospital. Making forty pounds last a fortnight. Knowing within ten seconds that someone was lying. Say the thing she could do that you cannot.
• one afternoon that was actually goodThere will be one. A long drive, a hospital waiting room, the week after your divorce when she turned up and said nothing. Tell it with a place and an action and let it stand alone.
• what she said too oftenThe phrase. Every difficult mother has one, and the room will laugh at it, and the laugh will be real rather than dutiful. That laugh is the most useful thing in the whole speech.

What you must not do is describe her as loving if she was not, or devoted if she was not. Your siblings are in the front row and they can hear it. So can your own children, who watched some of this and are now watching you decide whether the family lies.

If you were estranged

If you had not spoken to her in years, the room knows. Do not pretend at a closeness that ended in 2019. One clean sentence handles it. The rest of the speech is then about who she was rather than about the two of you.

My mother and I had not spoken properly for six years. I am not going to explain that today. I am here because she was my mother, and because someone should say what she was like.

That is enough. Refusing to explain is a complete position, said out loud, and it is much stronger than an explanation nobody in the pews can verify.

How to end it

Do not end on forgiveness. Forgiveness announced at a lectern is either untrue or nobody’s business, and the room can usually tell which. End on something factual and small, which is what people carry out of a church anyway.

She was my mother for fifty-one years. Nobody else will ever be that, and I am going to feel it for the rest of my life.

True whether or not you liked her, which is exactly why it works.

Then stop. A eulogy for a difficult mother should be shorter than a warm one — 3 minutes, about 400 words. Every extra minute is a minute in which the temperature can drift, and drift is the only real risk here. For the arithmetic, see how long a eulogy should be.

• How do I write a eulogy for a mother I did not like?

  Put one honest sentence early, near the top, that tells the room this is not the standard warm speech. Then spend the rest on things that were true and admirable — what she was frighteningly good at, one afternoon that was genuinely good, the phrase she said too often. Do not call her loving or devoted if she was not. Keep it to about 3 minutes.

• Is it acceptable to be honest about a difficult mother at her funeral?

  Yes, at the level of temperature rather than detail. A room can hold the sentence “she was extraordinary and she was very hard to live with”. It cannot hold a specific accusation, a diagnosis or a named incident, because a funeral has no way to answer back and the day stops being about her.

• What if her friends thought she was wonderful?

  Assume they did, and say so. “Some of you knew my mother as a friend. That was a good deal. Being her daughter was a different job.” That acknowledges their version without conceding yours, and it accuses nobody, so nothing has to be defended afterwards.

• Should I mention that we were estranged?

  If the room knows, name it in one sentence and refuse to explain it. “My mother and I had not spoken properly for six years. I am not going to explain that today.” Explaining invites the room to weigh evidence it does not have. Naming it removes the false note from everything that follows.

• What should I not say in a eulogy for a difficult mother?

  Do not say she was a wonderful mother if she was not, do not announce that you forgive her, and do not describe a single incident. The first is heard as a lie by anyone who was there, the second is either untrue or private, and the third turns a funeral into a hearing.