My mom, Cheryl Altman, died in the winter of 2025 from pancreatic cancer. She was 72. She was funny, fiercely loyal, endlessly thoughtful, and the kind of person who made a room feel warmer the second she walked into it.
She hosted loud holidays in a bustling kitchen that always smelled like something good. She made banana muffins for her grandkids, planned treasure hunts, dominated trivia nights with Jeopardy-level recall, and somehow never missed a soccer game, baseball game, or chance to show up for the people she loved.
Someone had to write her eulogy. There was never a question that it would be me. Only whether I could get it right.
What it felt like
I expected it to feel like grief. And it did.
But it also felt like pride — like one last chance to honor her properly and tell the truth about who she was.
Writing it was hard. Standing up to deliver it was harder. But afterward, I felt something I didn't expect: gratitude. Gratitude for having the words and for knowing how to put the pieces together when my family needed it most.
And I kept thinking about the people who don't know where to begin.
Because grief is already heavy enough.
Her story, too
My mom was a writer long before I was.
For years, she wrote candle-lighting ceremonies for bar and bat mitzvahs after a career in copywriting. She had a gift for noticing the detail that unlocked someone's whole story: the small habit, the forgotten memory, the thing everyone else overlooked.
She could make people feel seen.
She also had a sharp wit and a magnetic personality that pulled people toward her. Her friendships lasted decades. Her home was always full. Summers in Traverse City, late-night laughs around the table, s'mores with her grandkids, road trips, holidays, stories — she made ordinary moments feel important.
Standing up to speak at her service, I realized something.
The work I was doing for her was the same work she had quietly been doing for other people all along.
The through-line
Writing has been the through-line of my life for as long as I can remember.
Journalism taught me how to listen. Advertising and copywriting taught me how to shape emotion into language. Content design, which I practice at eBay, taught me how to create clarity through ambiguity.
But writing my mom's eulogy taught me something different entirely.
A eulogy isn't just writing.
It's memory. Identity. Love. A life distilled into words that can actually hold the weight of what someone meant.
That's what makes it so hard. And that's why it matters so much to get right.
Why Farewell Script exists
Farewell Script exists because I know how overwhelming this moment can feel.
If you're here, someone you love is gone. Or about to be.
You may be staring at a blank page, terrified you won't be able to capture the person they really were. You may be worried the words won't do them justice.
I know that feeling intimately.
I also know that when the right words finally come together, it can feel like one final act of love.
That's what I want to help people do.
Not hand off their story. Honor it.
Let me help you get it right.
