You are speaking for your aunt because someone had to, and your cousins could not.

Her children are in the front row and they cannot do this. Your mother, who is her sister, cannot do it either. You are the compromise, and a compromise at a lectern is a real position with real advantages.

What the front row needs from you

• her children need their mother, not their auntYou knew her as an aunt, which is a particular and partial view. Ring one of your cousins tonight and ask for two things you did not know. Then quote them by name at the lectern, so the speech contains her as a mother and not only as the woman who ran the family barbecue.
• your parent needs their siblingYour mother has been someone’s sister for 60 years and stopped being one on Tuesday. Almost nothing at a funeral addresses that. One sentence about the two of them as children is the line she will remember for the rest of her life.
• the room needs someone who can finishThat is why you are up there. You are allowed to be less devastated than the front row. It is not disrespect, it is the reason you were asked.

You are the compromise, and that is a real position with real advantages.

The material an aunt or uncle actually leaves

An aunt is a specific kind of adult in a child’s life, and nobody ever writes it down. Four places to look, and you will have material inside 10 minutes.

• what she let you doAunts and uncles are the adults who allowed things: the late night, the first drink, the swearing, the record you were not supposed to have. Every cousin in that room has a version of that story and yours will unlock theirs.
• the houseThe smell of it, the chair, the biscuit tin, the television always on, the dog. Concrete objects do the work of description and a room recognises them instantly.
• what she said about your parentsAn aunt is the first adult who tells you your mother and father are also people. Whatever she said about them, that is a real relationship in one line.
• the thing she did outside the familyThe job, the choir, the 30 years at the same practice. Half the room is not family and is here for that woman, not for the aunt. Give her one section.

Her house had a rule that no child was ever sent to bed while there was still talking going on. I did not understand until I was 30 that this was a policy and not an oversight.

one object or rule, told straight, does more than a paragraph of description

Mum, you were her sister for 61 years. She talked about you constantly, mostly to complain, and always with a face that gave her away.

the sentence for your own parent — said to them, by name, near the end

If the family argued about her

Aunts and uncles are frequently the family’s disputed territory. The one who did not speak to your father for a decade. The one everyone had a view about. Half the room has a grievance and the other half has a story about it.

You do not litigate any of that from a lectern and you also do not pretend it was not so. Acknowledge the shape of it in one sentence, without detail, and move on. Nobody needs the particulars and everybody knows them. When the difficulty was larger than that, a eulogy for a parent who was not good to you covers the same ground at full length.

She was not an easy woman, and she did not want to be. She was the one who told the truth at Christmas, and every one of us needed it at least once.

names the difficulty and turns it into the reason she mattered, in two sentences

How long, and where to stop

Shorter than a child’s eulogy for a parent. Three to 4 minutes is right. You are not the chief mourner and a long speech from the nephew moves the attention to the wrong place.

End on her own words, or on the one thing of hers that is still in daily use in somebody’s house. Then say nothing else and sit down.

• How do you write a eulogy for an aunt or uncle?

  Start from the material only a nephew or niece has: what she let you do that your parents did not, her house and its objects, what she said about your parents, and the work she did outside the family. Then ring a cousin for two things you did not know about her as a mother, and quote them by name. Keep it to 3 or 4 minutes.

• What do you say about an aunt at her funeral?

  Say what she was to a child, in objects rather than adjectives: the chair, the biscuit tin, the rule about bedtime, the dog. Give one section to the woman the non-family half of the room knew, meaning her job or the thing she did for 30 years. Say one sentence to her sibling, your own parent, about what the two of them were as children.

• Is it strange for a nephew to give the eulogy?

  No, it is common and it is deliberate. Her children usually cannot get through it and her siblings often cannot either. You were chosen because you are close enough to have real material and far enough to stay standing, and that is exactly the job.

• How long should a eulogy for an aunt or uncle be?

  Three to 4 minutes, which is about 400 to 550 words. You are not the chief mourner, and a long speech from a nephew moves the room’s attention away from her children. Two stories told properly is the whole of it.