Losing someone we love is one of the most difficult experiences we can go through. We feel sadness, the pain of loss, and a "disconnectedness" from the person who was so much a part of our lives. But then, in time, a kind of healing takes place within us, and we experience a new and different way of being connected to the person we lost to death. We begin to feel their presence within us and around us. We experience them in ways we never had before. We realize that, though they are gone from us in body, their spirit is always a part of us and they are not truly gone at all.

This popular poem, written by an unknown author, is often quoted at funerals, in obituaries, and on memorial cards. Put to music by Robert Prizeman, the director of the English boys' choir "Libera", this haunting song leads us to that place where we are reminded that those who die are not gone forever, but remain connected to us in new and different ways.

  Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
   

 
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle, gentle autumn rain.
 
 

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.



When you awake in the morning hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft, soft starlight -
starlight at night.

 

 






Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.

 
 





Words: Anonymous
Music: Robert Prizeman (MCPS)

Recording from the CD
"Free" by Libera.
Copyright 2004 by EMI Ltd.
Soloist: Ben Crawley / with Joseph Platt
(Please do not copy or distribute)