Standing Room Only

     While most tourists at Westminster Abbey were looking up at the arched ceilings and stained glass windows, I was looking down at the graves beneath my feet. In my time at the abbey, I must have walked over at least a dozen gravestones without even reading the dedication. I didn’t do this out of disrespect, but the wave of tourists kept pushing me forward, preventing me from gingerly stepping to the side. Who I had walked over? Was it someone famous? What had that person contributed to the world? I didn’t know any of this; all I knew was that an elderly Italian woman standing on top of where his head might be.
      Westminster Abbey is an overcrowded graveyard that is the final resting place for some of the most influential people to have ever lived including Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, and countless others. Obviously, the monarchs all receive “V.I.P.” treatment and it is impossible to miss their graves. However, most of the people buried in the abbey spend their eternal slumber within a maze of cramped nooks and crannies. Many of them will go unnoticed and stepped on by the abbey’s visitors who use many of the graves as nothing more than a place to walk on in order to see Queen Elizabeth’s golden tomb.

       Even within Poet’s Corner, there are differences in the way certain writers are memorialized. For example, Shakespeare isn’t even buried there but gets a wall all to himself featuring a carving in his likeness, while Charles Dickens lies in the ground beneath a plain gray slab. All three Bronte sisters are confined to a small stone that looks only slightly bigger than a postcard. I’m surprised that whoever made the stone was able to fit all three names on it. This says a lot about how these writers were thought of at the time of their deaths, especially by those running the abbey. For example, there were very few people at Dickens’ funeral, but when the abbey doors were opened to the public, they flooded in to pay respects to their beloved writer.

      The abbey no longer accepts bodies. All the spots are filled. In 1920, the Unknown Soldier became the last person to be buried at Westminster. While being buried in the abbey was clearly an honor, I don’t think it’s the ideal final resting place. Why would someone want to be buried in a place where unappreciative tourists step on them all day? Wouldn’t it be nicer to be somewhere where only the people who care enough to visit you would pay their respects? Perhaps you might want to be buried next to family members. I hear the country is perfect for that type of thing.

         Apparently though, some people would rather be buried among monarchs, scientists, and literary geniuses. In this sense, Westminster Abbey seems like a morbid real estate commodity that would reflect someone’s social standing. Each inch closer you’re buried to the Queen, the more jealous your living friends would be. But due to space limitations, not everyone can rest comfortably. Ben Johnson went as far as to be buried standing up so that he would take up less room. When I go, I want enough room so I can lie down and stretch out. Eternity is too long to be on your feet.