In praise of being ordinary

My grandmother was buried in an unmarked grave. Her choice.
I wouldn’t mind following her example. My choice.
If my grandchildren need some scratches on a slab of marble in order to remember me, then I have probably wasted too much of my time here on earth.
There are many paupers’ graves marked in pencil, with a number written on a piece of wood that’s been stuck into the grass. O tempore. O mores.
Something grander is needed for all the forgotten people.
The British tomb of The Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. This everyday battle-body is buried in splendour amongst Kings, and Princes of the church.
The idea for the British national monument was spawned by a rough grave on the western front, marked by a rough cross which bore the pencil-written legend ‘An Unknown British Soldier’.
The anonymity of the entombed soldier is key to the symbolism of the monument: since his or her identity is unknown, it could theoretically be the tomb of anyone who fell in service of the nation, and therefore serves as a monument to all of their sacrifices. My father died in the war, and his body was never recovered. I never knew the man, but by all the war memorials, I can know his deeds.
Now many nations have similar memorials, more frequently recognising unknown soldiers, sailors and airmen, rather than an ‘unknown warrior’.
I wonder why we can’t also have a magnificent public tomb for all the unknown citizens who may not have family or friends to see the good they have done passed on through time, rather than have that good interred with their bones.
I think of all the unknown and unrecognized citizens who are alive today who, when they die, may never be remembered. They haven’t been a burden on the state, there is no record of them having been a trouble.
They are everyman, the faceless neighbour down the street, the forgotten relative, the quiet unassuming stranger whom you pass in the city without a glance; Joe Public or Edna Average.
They go about their lives unseen, unsung and uncelebrated, living a life swimming with the tide.
These are people who are solid, hard working independent citizens. But forgotten. Death, as in life, really does mean oblivion for them. Sometimes their words and ideals might live on, quoted by millions, but recognized only as being from ‘anonymous’.
My idea is that the house of debate in every democratic parliament should have a magnificent memorial to the Unknown Citizen, built in a central position in the lower house. The remains of the Unknown Citizen would be firmly positioned between the leader of the government and the leader of the loyal opposition, so that every issue of debate would have ‘every citizen’ at its core. No politician in the chamber couldn’t avoid this symbolic memorial to constituents they never took the time to get to know.

Charles Wolfe. 1791–1823