Ghost Marriage

I have always been of the mind that funerals and memorial services were more for the living left behind than they were for the loved one deceased. But then I read about ghost marriages arranged by the living for the deceased (that were unfortunately single at the time of their deaths), so they won’t suffer loneliness in the afterlife. This is a centuries old Chinese practice that persists even today though it was officially banned in 1949. Families arrange and celebrate the weddings of the deceased much like any other wedding except they usually disinter the new bride and move her to a new eternal resting place beside the groom. Of course this means grave robbing of sorts (since its usually family doing the digging) and in my mind evokes images that one might expect to see in a zombie movie or meme. In China there have been some instances of grave digging entrepreneurs selling brides (corpses) on the black market for as much as $30,000.  There is even among the legitimate (but still illegal) ghost marriages, a bride price or dowry to be paid by the family of the groom to the family of the bride. The customary betrothal gift for a ghost wedding is typically between $4,500 and $5,500.

The last thing mentioned in the article is the thing that really pushed my imagination into overdrive, "Ghost marriage between two dead people is stable and lasts forever. There is no such thing as divorce." Maybe this has something to do with why a lot of exes don’t want to be buried beside each other. What if the ghost couples have unhappy marriages in the afterlife (without the recourse of divorce)? Might be an interesting version of going to h--- (you know, opposite of Heaven’s Pearly Gates)? That brought me to thoughts of my own divorced parents, who both were single at the times of their passing 10 years apart to the day. Nah, I think for them until death do we part might be interpreted as in death remain parted and I figure they’d both want to keep it that way, no ghost marriage for them, at least not to each other!