Grief
Etymology
From Old French "grief" (a wrong, a hardship), from Latin "gravis" — "heavy." Grief is literally the weight a loss puts on you; the same root gives us "gravity" and "grave." The word kept the physical sense of heaviness even as it moved entirely inward.
noun · /GREEF/
The acute, involuntary pain of loss — most often the death of someone loved.
What it names
Reach for it to name the internal experience of loss itself, as distinct from the outward practices you perform around it.
Example
Months after the funeral, grief still ambushed her in the cereal aisle where he used to linger.
Related idea
Grief is the feeling; mourning is what you do with it — the rituals, the black clothes, the year of saying no to parties. You can grieve without mourning, and go through the motions of mourning while feeling little grief.
See also