Last Sunday Her Majesty the Queen and a great many others laid their wreaths at the Big Empty in Whitehall. Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty's not-so-Loyal Opposition, Republican and Pacifist, was watched by the circling media in case he blew his nose at the wrong time, His bow was deemed lacking in bendiness and an empty gesture.
The Cenotaph is, in its own stark way, an empty gesture. Despite the momentarily heart-warming 'THE GLORIOUS DEAD' engraved on it, it is missing the dead. Indeed, a cenotaph is by definition an empty tomb, associated with death but without a body or from which (in other cases) a body has been removed. In Whitehall this Cenotaph makes manageable the otherwise unmanageable, for nowhere in Westminster is there room to bury the bodies of those who have died in the wars that Britain has fought. Instead, a column and a grand description makes the multi-million life carnage seem almost homely.
An empty tomb that cannot accommodate the number of dead is one thing.
An empty tomb where the occupant has defeated death and lives for ever more? That's Easter. That's a cenotaph where the missing causes our heads to be lifted up in worship instead of bowed in thoughtful regret.
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