I think we’ve lost something with the decline of formalized grieving rituals - sitting shiva, wearing mourning clothes or black armbands, etc.

‘cause it’s like, okay if you’re dead set on forming permanent attachments to impermanent mortals and then being sad when your error’s shown up, at least the rituals enchanted the feeling and binded individual experiences to a collective narrative.

But more than serving the mourning, the rituals served the rest of society by quarantining it - mourners would stay housebound for an initial period, and then step down to going out in clothing that distinguished their status - to be treated delicately maybe, but also not to be taken seriously.

And then, possibly the most important thing, the rituals would specify a point at which to stop, after which those who persisted were considered to be the ones violating propriety.

Bringing that back would certainly do something to foreclose the possibility of “mourner” as a permanent identity or even career - MADD types, school shooting parents barnstorming around making a show of bawwwwing over decade-old corpsemeat and then expecting society to break important shit so as to indulge them, that sort of thing.