Eulogies: Timing Is Important

Eulogies are “good words” spoken to honor someone who has died, while obituaries are written accounts that appear after death. Death must come first because living funerals and living eulogies feel nonnormative and violate expectations of ritual and decorum. Regret and guilt can arise when considering giving or receiving a living eulogy. Eulogies are defined as positive and are understood to be biased in a way that supports survivors’ grief work. That benign bias is socially rewarded for the deceased, but if directed at a living person it can function like an extraordinary gift, creating a sense of debt and prompting reciprocation, which is not expected or possible in the same way.

"We have two words for what we write or say after someone has died: one Latin and one Greek. The Latin-based word obituary directly refers to someone's passing; the Greek-based word eulogy refers to the words spoken in honor of the deceased. An obituary is what we read in the morning paper; a eulogy is what we listen to during the funeral service. Either way, death has to come first; obituaries and eulogies come after. Why is this so?"

"Living funerals, and thus living obituaries and eulogies, are nonnormative. They violate intuition and an understanding of ritual and decorum. I once wrote a post in this space to discuss the film Get Low. The theme was guilt and regret. Today I ask, would we regret giving or receiving a living eulogy? The short answer is, yes to both, we would. The normative prohibition is just too strong. One might infer that the eulogist wishes the eulogized to be dead."

"First, a eulogy, by definition, must be positive. It is understood that a eulogy paints a biased picture of the deceased. It is part of the survivors' grief work. A good eulogy captures the essence of the deceased person's character, while not distorting it too much by omission. This benign bias is expected and rewarded. If such a eulogy were given to a living person, one might, in the best case, treat it as a great gift, a gift of almost immeasurable value."

"Gifts, as social scientists have long recognized, create debts (Schwartz, 1967). The receiver is called upon to reciprocate. With a proper eulogy, this is neither expected nor possible; no debt is perceived as having been created."

Read at Psychology Today