My grandmother wrote the eulogy for her own funeral. Here's why I plan to do the same thing.

• When someone dies, a family member or friend typically prepares the eulogy to honor that person.
• Instead of that, I am planning on writing my own eulogy that a loved one can deliver on my behalf.
• My grandma recently did this, and the closure we all felt after her funeral was immeasurable.

Eulogizing a life is a tradition at a lot of funeral services — typically, a close relative or friend will get up and speak about the deceased, and try to capture who they were in life and give them a proper send-off. 

Like a best man speech at a wedding, the quality of these varies. At their best, they can be powerful and poignant and moving, and even funny. At their worst, they can be dry or impersonal and leave no lasting impact on the loved ones in the audience. 

Writing your own eulogy gives you a chance to say your final farewells in your own voice 

When my grandma died at the age of 93 this past April, she left my mom extremely detailed notes on what she wanted her to say.

She had always felt out of step with the cultural norms around women's roles when she was coming of age, and she had some choice memories she wanted to share with us one last time. Like the fact that she refused to let my grandfather teach her how to drive — they had one lesson together, and then she fired him and had her female cousin teach her since she didn't like taking direction from a man.

She also had my mom announce the latest on her stocks' performance as of market close so that we could bask in the glory of her genius stock picks one last time. That's a real thing that my mom had to read to a church: "Meta — up two points." 

But most importantly, this also included a personalized note to each of her children and grandchildren. These notes stretched from sincere — she noted how fondly she remembered our hours-long phone calls that would lead us deep into the night — to flat-out funny, like when she requested we all do a shot of Jack Daniels, her favorite, at my upcoming wedding. 

Hearing from the deceased one last time creates a closure I didn't know was possible 

My grandma and I were very close, and when her health waned in the last years of her life, I was stressed every day waiting for a call to come in that she had died. When that dreaded call finally did come, I immediately called out of work and had a tough time adjusting to this new reality. 

When we went to her funeral service a few days later, the fact that we each were able to receive a final note from her made me feel a closure I was not expecting to come for years. Everything in her funeral was personalized, from the songs (she had the church play "I Am Woman" and "Que Sera Sera," for example) to the notes that made us all feel like we got one last chance to hear from her. 

It completely changed my perspective on her death. Because of all of her ups and downs health-wise over the last few years, unconsciously or not, I had figured our relationship may not have remained as meaningful to her as it had to me. But sitting in that wooden church pew, surrounded by her three daughters and five grandkids, I realized that it had been and she got to be the final voice who told me so.

It was so powerful that it convinced me to do this for my own funeral. Hopefully, that's a far-off day, but it never hurts to have some notes written down.