A Eulogy that Inspires and Influences Lives

To think about your own funeral and the content of your eulogy is as hard as looking at the sun. We go into denial and look away but if we settle into it and explore, there are surprising gifts that come our way.

When Susan Ann Koenig (pictured above) was asked to give the eulogy for her father she didn’t realise that over the years she’d become the eulogist for her entire clan, including her husband.

She discovered that the writing of each eulogy helped her through her own grief. It clarified the best of who each person was, the difference their lives had made and how powerful can be the single influence of one life.

“A good eulogy,” she says, “helps you to learn something about the person who had died which you hadn’t known before.”

“When we listen to a eulogy, there is a moment in time when we are acutely aware of the best of who a person was and just how much difference a single life can make.”

While it may be the usual approach in a eulogy to list a person’s successes, their educational attainments and the jobs they had, the influence of a person is often not calculated by their ‘achievements’ but by their kind actions, their courage in the face of adversity, their openness to the gift of each moment and the brevity of life.

Writing your own eulogy or providing the material for someone else to write it will help you answer life’s most important questions. As Susan discovered, “Contemplating your own eulogy brings your attention to your greatest hopes and dreams.”

Learn more about Susan’s eulogy journey by watching and listening to ‘The Energy of Eulogy: Susan Ann Koenig at TEDxOmaha, YouTube, 26 November, 2013.

Image: Susan Ann Koenig, LinkedIn profile.