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Eulogies are “good words” spoken to honor the dead.

There are good reasons not to pre-pone eulogies.

We ought to be thankful for opportunities to show gratitude to the living.

The opera ain’t over until the [. . .] lady sings. – Origin unknown

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.

Besides the morbid possibility of passive aggression, I see three interconnected reasons why we withhold eulogies from the living. 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........

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