Grief vs Mourning: What a Tribute Video Is For

Grief educator Alan Wolfelt separates two words most of us use for the same thing. On the Center for Loss’s Six Needs of Mourning page, he writes: “We call this interior experience of loss ‘grief.’” And: “Mourning means to express your grief outside of yourself.”

Grief is what a person feels. Mourning is what they do with it, in the open, with others. Wolfelt directs the Center for Loss and Life Transition and is an associate clinical professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine. This article is not grief counselling, and nothing here is a claim about what will help any one person. It is an idea worth knowing when you decide how to mark a death.

Why he says it needs other people

Wolfelt argues that mourning matters, and that it needs to be witnessed. He lists retelling the story of the person and their death among the ways people mourn, and writes that “remembering and sharing the past makes hoping for the future possible.” He also pushes back on the common line “it’s time to get on with your life,” which he treats as an instruction to deny grief rather than a comfort.

That is his view, and not every grief tradition shares it. It is still a useful lens for a practical question: what can the people who loved someone actually do together?

Where a shared video fits

A tribute video is a way of mourning in the outward sense. People say something about the person aloud, to a camera, in their own words, and someone else will hear it. Ours is the reading, not Wolfelt’s: he does not write about videos. We offer it as one way to think about why people who cannot be in the same room still want to take part.

It is also a reason to let people take part in the form that suits them. Some will want to record. Others will not, and that is theirs to decide.

Prompts that invite telling, not performing

These are written to make the retelling easy and to ask for nothing difficult:

• Tell us a story about them that only you know.
• What do you remember about the first time you met?
• What did they say or do that you still carry with you?
• Is there something you wish you had told them?

How it works in practice

One person shares a link. Each contributor records a short message from their own phone or computer, when they are ready, with no app and no account needed. videos.me compiles the messages into a single film the family can watch together or keep. Contributors can take their time, and no one needs to be chased.