Music That Makes You Cry.

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Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
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Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
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Mary Elizabeth Clark Frye (1905-2004) was born in Dayton, Ohio, and was orphaned at the age of three. A housewife and florist who lived in Baltimore, Maryland, after marrying, she wrote this poem after learning that a friend's mother had died. Because Mary was not a recognized poet, and because this poem was never officially published or copyrighted, there has been much debate over its origins and many different people have tried to claim it as their own or have written variations on the original. Extensive research has generally, if not fully, confirmed Mary to be the author.
Dear Abby author Abigail Van Buren researched the poem's history and concluded in 1998 that Mary Elizabeth Frye, who was living in Baltimore at the time, had written the poem in 1932. According to Van Buren's research, Frye had never written any poetry, but the plight of a German Jewish woman, Margaret Schwarzkopf, who was staying with her and her husband, had inspired the poem. Margaret Schwarzkopf was concerned about her mother, who was ill in Germany, but she had been warned not to return home because of increasing unrest. When her mother died, the heartbroken young woman told Frye that she never had the chance to "stand by my mother's grave and shed a tear". Frye, according to Van Buren's research, found herself composing a piece of verse on a brown paper shopping bag. Later she said that the words "just came to her" and expressed what she felt about life and death.
Frye circulated the poem privately, never publishing it. She wrote other poems, but this, her first, endured. Her obituary in The Times stated that she was the author of the famous poem, which has been recited at funerals and on other appropriate occasions around the world for 60 years.