You knew the last third of him, and you are about to describe the whole man.

A grandchild giving a eulogy has a specific problem and it is not a lack of love. It is jurisdiction. You knew him for 30 years and every one of them was after he stopped being the man his own children remember.

So you start writing, and what comes out is the shed, the mints, the same 4 sentences he said every time you arrived. Then you panic, because it sounds thin next to a life with a war, a marriage, a business and 5 children in it. You go looking for the earlier man in an obituary and you end up reading dates aloud.

Do not narrate the years you were not there. Say who you had.

Answer the standing question first

Every person in that room is quietly asking why the grandchild is speaking and not the children. Say it in your first 2 sentences and the question is gone for good. It is nearly always one of 3 reasons, and all 3 are fine out loud.

My mother asked me to do this, because she knew she would not get through it, and because I am the eldest of the 7 of us.

when the children could not

I am speaking for the grandchildren today. There are 6 of us, and I have a line from each one, so you will hear from all of them.

when you are the delegate for your generation

What a grandchild is uniquely qualified to say

This is the part nobody tells you: you did not get less of him, you got a different shift. He was retired, unhurried and off duty, and he told you things he never told his own children. That material exists nowhere else in the building.

• he had time, and his children never got that versionWhole afternoons of it. The drive, the allotment, the tip, the pub garden with a lemonade. Say what the 2 of you did that had no purpose. A grandfather with nothing to prove is a man his son never met, and the son is sitting in the front row wanting to hear about him.
• what he said too oftenThe 4 sentences you thought were too small for a eulogy are the best thing you own. Exact words, his phrasing, his grammar. If it was a warning about tyres, or a rule about money, or the same joke about the weather since 1998, that is the man, whole, in 9 words.
• what was in his pockets, his shed, his carObjects date a person better than dates do. The penknife, the folded handkerchief, the pencil behind the ear, the tin of assorted screws he would not throw away. One object described precisely is worth 3 paragraphs of character description.
• the thing he told you that he never told themOld men tell grandchildren things. About the war, about the year the business nearly went, about a brother who died at 19. If you are the only person in the room who knows it, and it does not shame anyone living, it belongs in the speech.

Getting the earlier man, tonight

You are not going to research 50 years by Saturday and you should not try. You need 2 facts and one scene from someone who was there, and that is a phone call or 3 short emails.

• 01Ask his children one question each, not a general one“What was he like at 30?” gets you nothing. “What did he do the day I was born?” or “What was he frightened of?” gets you a paragraph.
• 02Ask his brother, sister or oldest friend for one story from before the childrenThis is the only place the young man exists. One story is enough, and it should go early in the speech, before yours.
• 03Ask the other grandchildren for one line eachAsk for a sentence, not a memory. A sentence arrives in 20 minutes. A memory arrives never.

The desk will send those questions for you and put the answers back into the page with the name of whoever sent them, which is the fastest version of this. Either way, read the borrowed line as theirs. “His sister Margaret told me this on Tuesday” is stronger than absorbing it into your own voice.

Say the frame out loud

Do not pretend to a full account of him. Naming the limit of what you knew is the single move that makes a grandchild’s eulogy trustworthy, and it takes one sentence.

I only ever knew him old. I got the retired one, the one with time, and I know that is not the man some of you buried today.

There are 50 years of him I was not there for. I am going to leave those to the people who were, and tell you about the 30 I had.

Length, and the last line

3 minutes, or 4 if you are carrying lines from the cousins. End on something he said or something you did together, not on a summary of his character. The page that times a eulogy will tell you what your draft actually runs to out loud.

Grandad, the penknife is in my kitchen drawer and I use it every day. Tyres checked. Every Sunday.

the ending is his own phrase, handed back

If he was hard work, or the family is careful about him, your relationship with him was complicated applies here too. If it is your grandmother, a eulogy for a grandmother is the separate page.

• What do you say in a eulogy for a grandfather?

  Say in the first 2 sentences why you are the one speaking. Then use what only a grandchild has: the unhurried version of him, the phrases he repeated word for word, one object from his pockets or his shed, and one thing he told you that he never told his children. Add one story from his own brother or sister for the years before you. 3 to 4 minutes.

• How long should a grandchild’s eulogy be?

  About 3 minutes, or 4 if you are reading a line from each of the other grandchildren. Roughly 130 words a minute when read aloud slowly, so 400 to 500 words is the whole speech. Time your draft out loud rather than trusting the word count.

• Is it strange for a grandchild to give the eulogy instead of a son or daughter?

  No, and it is increasingly normal, usually because his children know they will not get through it. Name the reason out loud once and nobody wonders about it again. If you are speaking for all the grandchildren, say how many of you there are and read a line from each.