The Eulogy as Spiritual Autoethnography

In this article, I focus on the eulogy as spiritual autoethnography. I present three eulogies I delivered over a two-year period, reflecting on their contexts, content, and the process of constructing them. I show how autoethnographic and ethnographic sensibilities assisted me to tell a story in each eulogy that resonated with and felt meaningful to me and to those gathered to listen. As a form of autoethnography, a eulogy connects a person’s loss to a wider community, offering a way to explore meaning at the end-of-life and to reflect on changes across the life cycle. Although I was different in important ways from those to whom I was speaking in these eulogies, I reached out to grieving communities to recall our memories, honor relationships, speak from the heart, and connect about personal, emotional, and spiritual aspects of our lives. Spiritual autoethnography focuses on bringing meaning to our lives in the face of death and loss, and the importance of communicating across political, social, and class boundaries to cope with the challenges grief and loss create in our lives. In analyzing these events and taking them now to an academic audience, I aspire to bring compassion and emotional meaning, connected to spiritual concerns, to our lives and work as autoethnographers.