Is 'Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep' Worth Reading?

As Mom and Dad arrive at the company to hand it over to their biological son, Nick Yeager, I throw myself off the 30th floor. Blood splatters everywhere, and the crowd scatters in panic. Mom and Dad also scream in horror at the sight. But the moment they realize the dead person is me, the fear drains from their faces, replaced by nothing but disgust. "Back then, we brought home the wrong baby, so Nathan got to enjoy 20 years of wealth and privilege for nothing. Instead of being grateful to us for raising him, he kept making things hard for Nick after we acknowledged him and brought him home. And now he's killed himself at the office? What an ungrateful bastard!" The onlookers curse at me for having no conscience, saying that even in death, I won't let the Yeager family have a moment's peace. But in the end, no one expects Dad, who despises me more than anyone else, to hold my urn in his arms and beg me to come back with tears streaming down his face.

In my past life, my sister's secret lover says he wants to see a meteor shower. So, she takes all the family bodyguards and drives out to the countryside to create a romantic night under the stars for him. But she doesn't realize that an old enemy she once ruined sees the opening. They break into our home, seeking revenge and planning to wipe out the entire family. My mother throws herself over me to protect me, taking the brunt of the attack. She's critically injured and is barely hanging on. I call my sister again and again, begging her to come home. She eventually returns with the bodyguards, but it's too late. The enemies are caught, but then news comes in from the outskirts—her lover has disappeared, leaving behind a suicide note. In it, he blames me, accusing me of deliberately luring my sister away so that he would suffer at the hands of her enemies. Ultimately, he takes his own life. My sister burns the letter without a flicker of emotion. She says, "Don’t overthink it." Later, the blame falls on her. Our father promises to hand the family business over to me. But after the celebration banquet, my sister murders me in the bedroom. She stares at me with a blank face and snarls, "Someone as cruel as you should've died long ago. It should've been you who died, and the family inheritance should've been mine!" I die with a heart full of rage and disbelief. When I open my eyes again, I hear our enemies breaking down the villa doors.

The tale of a widow's harrowing journey through grief and peril into the cold remnants of a dead world. Damon Sharpe had in part found victory, he believed, in his battle to unearth a truth obscured by time. By autumn, he was dead, leaving to his wife Anne a house of unfulfilled wishes, remnants, and the key to the enigma of his obsession, the Mourner’s Cradle. A journey through grief and peril delivers Anne Sharpe from her home in St. Charles to the faraway skeletons of a long-dead civilization where she will find the desperate answers she seeks…or die trying. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

My brother, Theo Sorento, died in a plane crash on his way back home just to celebrate my birthday. They never found his body—only wreckage. Ever since, my parents forced me to kneel in front of his grave every year on my birthday, demanding that I repent for surviving when he didn’t. Then came my eighteenth birthday. I realized someone was following me. Panicked, I sent a few messages asking for help. Just then, Mom called, not to check on me but to lash out. “I know exactly what you're doing. You’re just making up excuses so you don’t have to kneel in front of your brother’s grave! You’re a liar. Why wasn’t it you who died instead of him? You’re a walking curse!” Before my phone was smashed under a boot, the last thing I heard was the cold click of her hanging up. Then, I was cut up into pieces, and what was left of me was tossed across the city. My father, the lead forensic pathologist on my case, didn’t even recognize me. Later, Theo returned alive with his wife, whom he had eloped with eight years ago. When they found out the pile of rotting flesh was me, they all went insane.

Six years after my younger brother and my fiancée passed away, I picked out a grave for myself. Before my final visit to their graves, my mother suddenly said, “Miles, you don’t have to go this year. The truth is that they never died.” I was startled for a moment before the two of them walked right out of my brother’s room. My brother, Sean, put on a teasing smile as he draped an arm around the woman beside him. “I won the bet! I told you my brother would never figure it out. “Who’s going to be on top tonight, huh, Vera?” My so-called late fiancée, who used to cry whenever she saw me suffer even the slightest grievance, looked at me with open disdain. “He’s just too stupid. We’ve been living next door this entire time, yet he never noticed.” It was only then that I realized my mother forbad me from entering Sean's room, not because it would make her grieve her son again, but because it was directly connected to the house next door. I was truly too foolish. Right up until a month before my death, I was still thinking about visiting their graves.

The day my husband, Stellan Montclair, was killed in battle, my cousin, Daphne Langford, wept and declared she would follow him in death. No one asked for my opinion. By the time I arrived, they had already decided everything. In seven days, Daphne would be laid to rest alongside my husband in the Montclair family crypt, bearing the title of his lawful wife. When I stepped into the chapel, I found Daphne reclining on a cushioned chair with a damp cloth pressed to her forehead while my mother-in-law, Vivienne Prescott, personally spoon-fed her warm broth. Meanwhile, my son, Ansel Montclair, had been kneeling before the coffin for six hours straight, both legs so swollen that they were trembling. No one told him to get up. No one offered him a cushion to kneel on. Vivienne glanced up at me. "You're back. Daphne's being interred in the Montclair crypt as the lawful wife in seven days. See to the arrangements." In my previous life, I did not dare disobey. The entire capital praised Daphne for the depth of her devotion. Vivienne called her a woman of honor. The moment I so much as furrowed my brow, countless mouths stood ready to call me petty and small-hearted. Yet seven days later, Stellan came back from the dead. Only then did I learn that he had taken a death-feigning potion so that he could openly and rightfully marry Daphne. I was cast from wife to concubine and spent the rest of my life crushed under Daphne's thumb. My son was stripped of his status as the legitimate heir, barred from the family title, and left to scrape by among commoners for the rest of his days. This time, though, I was living it all over again. I crouched down and lifted Ansel from the cold stone floor. Then, I looked at Vivienne. "If her devotion runs that deep, let her be buried with him today."