You are not crying, and you have started to wonder what is wrong with you.

Three ordinary reasons, none of which make you cold.

• the numbness is the griefThe first days are commonly flat — the standard description is feeling wrapped in cotton wool, watching yourself organise flowers. It very often arrives late, sometimes weeks after the funeral, frequently while doing something trivial. Nothing is broken. The order has not been cancelled; it has been delayed.
• you are the one doing the jobsSomeone has to ring the registrar, choose the coffin, count the sandwiches and write the speech. Grief needs unoccupied attention and you have not had any. People who organise a funeral routinely feel it for the first time on the Monday after, when the jobs run out.
• you already grieved, years agoIf they were ill for a long time, or absent, or you gave up on the relationship in 2011, you may have done most of this already. The death is an administrative confirmation of something you finished mourning long before. This is extremely common and almost nobody admits to it.

Do not perform a grief you cannot find. The room can tell.

So what do you say?

Here is the useful part: the flat, factual, specific eulogy is usually the better one. Emotion in a eulogy does not come from the speaker’s voice cracking. It comes from detail — the actual shirt, the actual phrase he used on the phone, the actual Tuesday. You can deliver detail perfectly well while feeling nothing, and the room will be moved even if you are not. That is not a trick. Accuracy is a form of love that does not require you to be crying.

• write about what he did, not about how you feelSentences that begin “I feel” are where fakery lives. Sentences that begin “He used to” are where the person lives. Fill it with the second kind.
• let other people supply the emotionText three relatives for one memory each and quote them by name in the speech. Their feeling is real, you are not pretending it is yours, and the room gets what it needs.
• you may say the quiet thing, briefly“I haven’t taken it in yet” is true, is allowed, and is the most relatable sentence available in that room — half of them have not either.
• do not force a big endingA speaker who is not crying and reaches for a crescendo lands as insincere. Stop on a small, concrete, specific line and sit down. It will be better than the crescendo.

If it arrives mid-sentence

It sometimes does, and precisely because you have not felt it yet. Mark a PAUSE in the margin above the two lines most likely to open the door — usually the last thing they said to you — and write at the bottom of each page: stop, breathe, look at one person, carry on. Then it has a plan rather than an ambush.

And afterwards, when it does come, some weeks from now, in a supermarket: that is not late and it is not wrong. That is just where yours was.

• Is it normal not to feel sad when a parent dies?

  Yes. Numbness in the first days is one of the most common responses — often described as feeling wrapped in cotton wool while you make arrangements. It frequently arrives weeks later, once the jobs run out. If they were ill for years or estranged from you, you may also have done most of the grieving already.

• How do I give a eulogy when I don’t feel anything?

  Do not perform emotion — the room can hear it. Write about what they did, not how you feel: specific details, actual phrases they used, actual places. Detail is what moves a room, and you can deliver detail accurately while feeling numb. Quote other relatives by name so their feeling is present without you faking yours.