I was at one once where several speakers acknowledged the pain the deceased had caused with her penchant for gossip. It was much needed within the group of friends, and precipitated a lot of healing. Each speaker also had a long list of good things to say about the deceased as well.
She was just that sort of lady. She was immensely loved and very positive in most aspects of her life, but she did a lot of harm with this one defect of character.
I can’t look at youtube from here, but anyone want to find a link to John Cleese’s eulogy for Grahm Chapman, which was insulting, though obviously in jest.
A year ago I attended a service for a dead friend who became addicted to crack, married five times, abandoned all of his families serially and left behind a pretty wide swath of heartbreak.
His eulogy was very straightforward, which was probably a kindness as it could have been a real rant! And they played Bob Dylan’s “Saving Grace.” “Guess I owe you some kind of an apology.”
Such a hoot. I was smiling through my tears.
He would have loved it.
Orson Scott Card’s “Speaker for the Dead”, book two of the Ender Wiggin series, deals quite extensively with the concept put forth in the OP.
It’s hard to say, really. It’s a pretty positive obituary overall, but I’m thinking you wouldn’t ask the question if there wasn’t something negative buried in it. What I’m seeing is that she doesn’t seem to have changed much over the course of her life, and she obviously was all about family, which might have made her quite overbearing. Isn’t that what they say about Jewish grandmothers?
The eulogy I gave for my grandfather was ten minutes long and every word of it was absolutely true. I didn’t even bend the truth once. I had the audience in tears and people were asking me afterwards if I did speaking engagements. My grandmother said it was the best she’s ever heard, and she was married to the man for 61 years and, being very old, and heard a lot of eulogies.
Honesty at times like that delivers the goods more than bullshit does, because bullshit eulogies (or wedding speeches, or whatever) all sound the same. Honest ones really tell the audience the story behind the person, and that’s the best sendoff you can give someone; by truly remembering them.
That’s what I was going to say, and I’m frankly amazed it took 24 posts before anyone else mentioned it. It really is an excellent book, and the moment when he finally does give his speech for the dead, the reader and the other characters alike are floored.
She was 97 and had her wits till the end, although her short term memory was shot. But she was a person with faults and everything. We loved her and she was also enough of a pain in the ass and enjoyed being a pain in the ass. Now the eulogy contained a story about how two days before she passed she asked the doctor to come closer so she could “kick him in the ass” because he did something unpleasant. And then she lamented that she was not able to kick anymore and he would need to bend over so she could smack him. The preacher told this story as her son, a witness related it to him. She loved to complain loudly and leave small tips at restaurants and see which of her grandchildren (who are my age) would be really embarrassed. She loved to meddle in other people’s business. She was outsized in personality.
Here’s an unflattering obituary for a regularperson.
“Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.”
I don’t know if this counts, but my highschool BFF’s husband committed suicide. They were Catholic. At the funeral their priest spoke about how sad it was that my friend would never see her husband in heaven, since he’d committed the unforgivable sin of taking a life; albiet, his own.
My friend was inconsolable. The priest wanted to speak with her at the grave site, but we, her friends, wouldn’t allow it.
What are you trying to prove when you tell the whole honest truth? Make yourself look like Solomon or George Washington?
I would think of others that are in the room. I’ve been at funerals where I heard eulogies that were not a hurtful truth, but embellished stories that seemed to be attempts by the speaker to entertain and make the speaker look like a real raconteur. It was very irritating at a time where great sensitivity would have be more welcome.
People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty. ~Richard J. Needham
Reality is bad enough. Why should I tell the truth? ~Patrick Sky
Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. ~Slovenian Proverb
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks. ~Lin Yutang
My father’s father, may he rest in peace, had troubled and difficult relations with pretty much everyone around him. One pattern that, tragically, he seemed to repeat many many times was as follows. He would meet a new person, e.g. a nurse at the hospital, or the director of the choir at his church, or, well, you name it. And at first, things would go along swimmingly, and this new person just thought my grandfather was a charming, wonderful person. And then, for no reason, my grandfather would simply turn on the person. He would become furious about some made up – not trumped up, but entirely fabricated – slight. And he would, quit the choir in a huff and swear never to return to that church, refuse to speak with that nurse because she was the worst nurse he’d ever seen and a disgrace to her profession. This pretty much characterized every interaction he had over the course of his nearly 80 years on earth. It’s tragic and terrible, because I think the warm charming person was not an act. I think that really was him. But somehow the crazy side won out every time.
Back to the op. He died many years ago, and when we went to the funeral, I was curious what the minister was going to say. I was quite impressed by how the minister handled the situation.
I don’t remember the exact words but I remember him acknowledging that my grandfather had had a difficult life and seemed to face challenges in connecting with people. The minister also noted my grandfather’s love for his family.
After the service, I mentioned to my mother that I thought the minister’s words were thoughtful and that I was happy that he had not tried to whitewash my grandfather’s life. She told me that she had spoken to the minister several days prior to the funeral and explained that the family wanted the minister to, within the bounds of propriety, offer a truthful account of my grandfather’s life.
I think a sine of a good eulergy is that it sticks to the function of the person’s life and doesn’t go off on tangents.
I seem to remember that when Jerry Garcia died, his daughter was pretty blunt in her eulogy. She–speaking to the rock icons gathered–said something like, “Yeah, you guys had a lot of good times with Jerry, but he was a pretty shitty dad.” This is not the exact quote, but close enough.
Maybe a comment like this one could serve to jolt someone in the audience into changing their ways?
My father was a crappy dad and husband; he paid the bills and didn’t drink excessively or beat us or anything, he just was generally thoughtless and unpleasant to be around.
My mother wrote him a eulogy that was basically a recitation of facts. He did like to tell jokes (usually racist or off-color), and she included mention of that. But there was nothing about how much he adored/was adored by his family, and that would have been clear to anyone who could read between the lines.
I remember helping her write it. She had something in there about one little activity he did with me when I was little, and we thought we should flesh that out a bit. So we sat there, trying to think of something else he used to do with me as a kid . . . and sat . . . and sat . . . and came up blank. Rather telling. But that was in private and didn’t get into the eulogy.
She was an interfering bitch and a royal PITA? If it’s the opposite, I mean no offence, but it seems to me that there is very little detail there (for example, a quarter of it talks about general history more than her life), and although it’s positive on the surface it seems lacking in warmth. But I would never have picked up on that without the context of this thread (and I could be entirely wrong).
I recall her as saying (to Deadheads, the fans of the Grateful Dead’s music) “Yeah, dad was a great musician, but he was a pretty shitty father, but because of all of you, (and all of the ticket money that you spent listening to him play over the years) I never had to work at Dairy Queen when I was a kid growing up”. 
I wrote honest elegies for my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother.
My zeyde had this annoying habit of constantly wanting to know what you were eating these days and if you were getting enough vitamins and bran. That’s the only negative thing I can think of about him.
I can’t really think of anything negative about my bubby. She was saintly.
I think I mentioned some of dad’s negative qualities (REALLY bad temper) in his elegy. To give a totally positive elegy would have been crap. Dad would have much preferred the truth to crap.
My friends and loved ones will have instructions to be honest in what they say when I am gone.