I’ve attended a lot of funerals this year. Funerals in the mountains and on the beach. Funerals on a train and beside a private plane. Funerals disguised as parties, one with a signature drink designed by the deceased. Everywhere people a mere ten years older are popping off, dropping like flies. The last memorial service I attended was a grim affair. What made it painful wasn’t so much the loss of the deceased but of her final opportunity. It killed me that such a smart, funny woman had such a boring funeral.

Now that colon and all the other agrochemical, petrochemical, and plastic-industry sponsored cancers are on the rise, it’s time to develop a rating system for funerals. Not only for those casually shopping for their future services, but also for folks who want to have some fun while we’re still here.

There’s not a lot anyone can do about people who were assholes when they were alive—pharmaceutical CEOs, lobbyists, right-wing pundits, and the like. Anti-vaxxers, real estate agents, and people who threaten to call the cops on neighborhood children are beyond salvation. As in life, these people tend to suck in death. This rating system isn’t for them or those who would be roped into their funerals. Having said that, every now and then one of these monsters dies and is so thoroughly and universally despised that a great time can be had at their literal and metaphorical expense—drinking, dancing, and laughing it up with the like-minded.

For services that really try to show mourners a good time (fellowship, catering, an open bar), I propose three stars. For those that also reflect the personality or champion the causes of the deceased (ocean conservation, gun control, campaign finance reform, reproductive rights), three and a half stars. For those that meet these criteria and make a good faith effort to show mourners an excellent time (magic tricks, narcotics, go-go dancers), four stars. Anything more, in half-star increments, must be reserved for those truly bespoke events that supply period costume, subsidize international travel, or feature noted entertainment. We cannot all afford Steely Dan, or what’s left of them, to play graveside, but some of us can hire the Yacht Rock Review.

While this rating system could inspire a craze of funeral crashing, used by strangers the way Rotten Tomatoes purports to help us shop movies or Yelp restaurants, that’s not my intent. Despite the enduring charm of Harold and Maude (far more engaging than its 4.4 out of 5 on RT suggests), this would, for most people, be a mistake. For one thing, it’s not like conning your way into a wedding where, as at least one movie suggests (far less engaging that its 3.5 suggests), you can blend in with the legitimate by claiming acquaintance with one side of the aisle or the other if you’re quick on your feet. At a funeral, you either know the deceased or you don’t. You’ll have a primer on the life of Mr. Doe in the mortuary pamphlet and eulogy, but it’s too easy to get caught out by the grieving on those all-important details. Like how he died.

But a rating system can help those planning memorials demonstrate what should matter most in this, their moment of profound or moderate grief: a reverence for life. That is, for our lives, the ones who still have time to lose. So why not include in your newspaper obituary, mortuary listing, or social media post a rating goal? Jane Smith, 68 years of age, beloved only child of Rupert Wayne and Gloria Smith, deceased, proud citizen of Zebulon, North Carolina. Respected accountant and cherished pickle-ball companion. Smith is survived by a knitting circle and two Shih Tzus, Orange and Emelio. Refreshments, wool, and needles provided at the reception. Three stars anticipated. Guests would be asked to fill in a survey before departing. The results would be tabulated, nationally collated, and statistically analyzed. Funeral homes and similar establishments would earn their own ratings for their level accuracy. If only sixty percent of their funerals’ anticipated star ratings (ASR) match those of mourner-opinion-or-perception-of-event survey (MOPES) results in any given year, they’d earn a D (two out of five stars) for that period. Parlors and chapels would still host one and two funerals, of course. Everybody has to die. They’d just advertise them as such. I imagine there would be instances of unpleasantness between the bereaved and directors, which is where the ASR councilors come in. These trained therapists would help the grief-stricken adjust to the difficult reality of a less than exciting burial, interment, inhumation, cremation, or wake.

Five-stars must be held in abeyance for those rare events during which the majority of mourners cry because they’re laughing too hard. When they’re doubled over by the story of Aunt Gwen’s reaction to the decomposing mouse served in an arugula salad last month (“I didn’t know this came with cheese”—also the punchline of her Yelp review), stories of a misspent youth recorded by the deceased (Aunt Gwen was, by her own account, “a saucy wench”), or the jokes of a professional comic hired for the occasion. This is the high bar, the full star mark, by which all should be measured. Imagine if the rest of life were like this, if we judged every activity this way. True, some of us would still have sex, but few would have children which, in turn, would lead to a depressing lack of funerals.

This system will sound callous to some and sacrilegious to others, but we can all agree that life is short. Is it too much to ask that we’re given an indication of what we’d be committing two or even three hours to? When so little turns out as we’d like, when we find ourselves beset on all sides by uncertainty—economic, political, ecological—it would be nice, at last, to have a sense of we’ve a right to expect.

————

Helena Feder has published essays, interviews, and poems in venues including North American Review, The Georgia Review, Radical Philosophy, Orion, ISLE, ASAP/Journal, The Writer’s Chronicle, Terrain.org, The Branches, Another Chicago Magazine, After the Art, Guernica, Green Letters, Western American Literature, Tikkun, and Critical Read. Helena is Editor of Tar River Poetry and Professor of Environmental Humanities at ECU; she’s the author of Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture (Routledge) and Cat Woman in Dog Country (creative nonfiction, forthcoming 2027 from Alabama UP).