Grief is exhausting, as we all know. The bereaved are muddled and tense, they need allowances made. But who knows you are mourning, if there is nothing but a long face to set you apart? No one wants to go back to the elaborate conventions of the Victorians, but they had the merit of tagging the bereaved, marking them out for tenderness. And if your secret was that you felt no sorrow, your clothes did the right thing on your behalf. Now funeral notices specify “colorful clothing.” The grief-stricken are described as “depressed,” as if sorrow were a pathology. We pour every effort into cheering ourselves up and releasing balloons. When someone dies, “he wouldn’t have wanted to see long faces,” we assure ourselves—but we cross our fingers as we say it. What if he did? What if the dead person hoped for us to rend our garments and wail?

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 297