A Eulogy for a Eulogy

This weekend I went to a funeral of a close family member. Well, close in terms of blood relation, but nothing else. Rather than having a Catholic mass, the funeral was held at the funeral home. As the service started it became clear immediately that it was going to be a bad one. The preacher wandered from topic to topic, grasping at bits of information the children of the deceased had told him and elaborating on those bits of information as if to make some sense of life passed. It was awful. Rambling. Meaningless. In fact, most of what he said wasn't even true.
After the service thankfully came to a close, we climbed in the car to head home. As the car doors slammed shut, my dad turned to my mother and stated very emphatically that at his funeral he wants an honest eulogy. He wants someone who actually knew him in life to speak for him. He wants people to say that, "yeah, he could be an anti-social, moody, jerk, but in general he was a pretty decent person." I couldn't agree more. It seems like a funeral should be an acknowledgement of a life, whatever that life may have been. It should be both an acceptance of the life led and an acceptance of the life ending. It should be honest. Anything less than that is inappropriate and disrespectful, not only to the person deceased but to the lives that person touched.