This morning’s WaPo has a frustratingly dry article about a topic that is on our daily horizon: burials at Arlington National Cemetery. The Cemetery, covering more than 600 acres, contains the remains of more than 300,000 service members, American and foreigner, who supported and defended our nation in uniform. The Cemetery abuts Fort Myer and the grounds of Arlington House, the home of General Robert E Lee, which is maintained by the National Park Service.

We’re running out of room. The last survivors of World War II are passing by in review, dying at a rate of about 1,000 a day, and some are being interred at Arlington. There are also veterans of Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan being buried here each day. It’s a terrible thing to see so many funerals each day. The grounds are actually quite small for the traffic that passes along its lanes.

At Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, there were four funerals scheduled at 9 a.m., three at 10 a.m., six at 11 a.m., and 15 between 1 and 3 p.m.

The nation's shrine to its military dead had 6,785 funerals in the just-concluded fiscal year, an all-time record. Now, as the dying of the World War II generation peaks, the cemetery is so busy that despite careful choreography, people attending one funeral can hear the bugle and rifle salutes echoing from another.

As a result, the cemetery is about to begin a $35 million expansion that would push the ordered ranks of tombstones beyond its borders for the first time since the 1960s.

People die; it’s the inevitable result of being born. And, people die violently: in falls from buildings, torn asunder in horrendous traffic accidents, burned in house fires. All this, and more, has claimed our service members, including those fighting today in the Middle East.

We’re seeing less business at Arlington from Iraq and Afghanistan than from our past wars because the nature of this war is different and the casualty lists are smaller, though no less poignant. Each death, whether in Mosul, or the back bedroom, or in a nursing home, is a tragedy to a family. And there are just too many tragedies.

The Millennium [Project] expansion has involved, among other things, the sensitive transfer of 12 acres within the cemetery from the National Park Service's historic Arlington House, the onetime home of Robert E. Lee. The Park Service has lamented the likely loss of woodland and the cemetery's encroachment on the majestic hilltop home, which dates to 1802.

The project, which focuses on the northwest edge of the cemetery, includes expansion into about 10 acres taken from the Army's adjacent Fort Myer and four acres of cemetery maintenance property inside the boundaries, officials said.

The extra space would provide room for 14,000 ground burials and 22,000 inurnments in a large columbarium complex, officials said. The project comes on the heels of extensive work underway to utilize 40 acres of unused space in the cemetery, creating room for 26,000 more graves and 5,000 inurnments. And there are plans for further outside expansion in the years ahead.

Arlington also has an expanded Columbarium for those choosing cremation of their remains. This too will be expanded.

Arlington exists to hold their last remains and to honor their memory. I wish it was empty parkland.