IN Australia the Aborigines observe sorry business.

When someone dies it is thought to affect the whole community. Families come together, neighbours and friends join, and they eat and cry and comfort one another until the body is put away. The dead person is not named for fear of disturbing their spirit. They are acknowledged in this silence.

For Torres Strait Islanders the time is named sad news. A year after the death there is tombstone unveiling; during the year money is sent to the in-laws to buy a headstone.

The memorial is wrapped in cloth and brightly decorated before a second burial ceremony is held. Going-to-rest prayers are said and the bond between the living and dead is acknowledged.

The Malagasy people of Madagascar perform the turning of the bones. Every five to seven years the family holds a celebration where the body is sprayed with wine and perfume. A band plays and the family members dance with the bones of the deceased.

For the Jewish, it is considered kindness to pay a shiva call to the home of the mourning, visitors bring food but remain silent until the bereaved speaks. Then it is customary to talk only of the person who has died. Following the funeral they eat the meal of comforting.

I interviewed a man who had survived the Holocaust. He, through a life-preserving combination of luck, will and charm, had made it out of Auschwitz. His family, however, perished. It was only in 2012, finally, that he was able to really grieve for them.

His rabbi persuaded him to go back and visit the camp and, while there, to sit shiva for his family. He sat in the grounds, on a low stool, and wept for his seven brothers and sisters and both parents while friends and strangers wished him health.

When my aunt Anne died I was in Cuba, travelling alone without common sense or Spanish. Being out of reach, I received the news by text message in a hotel in the heart of Havana. Two of the maids came and sat in my room with me while I cried and tried to describe what was wrong by jabbing at Spanish words in the back of an old Lonely Planet. Each day following they turned my face cloth into a swan and rested it on my pillow.

Because I was overseas I missed aunt Anne's funeral. She had known she was very ill but didn't tell me because I was going travelling overseas and didn't want to delay my trip for her sake. I was furious to miss the funeral and I feel I've never quite moved on.

Our modern, secular social systems have nothing to acknowledge mourning as a process. We wear black to the funeral and then we carry on, keeping our grief politely private despite the plain affront of a world ticking on regardless.

If I had talent I would design contemporary mourning dress, some outward symbol that all is not well, so that when the barista asks how your day is going you can be honest or blunt or rude.

My clothes would turn the wearer to a daily memorial to their loved one, until grief's keen edges blunted.

To Absent Friends, an idea from a coalition of charities, aims to make the first week of November our own Day of the Dead, as in Mexico where a public holiday allows family to gather and remember their lost.

During that time we would be licensed to talk about our memories of those who have died without discomfort or embarrassment.

I've tried this week and I can't think of any specific memories that would sum up what my aunt Anne was to me. I remember her more as a comforting presence, warm and fearless and I'd like to be able to speak of that without feeling mawkish.

I'm not sure I'd dance with her bones, although her sense of mischief would have enjoyed the suggestion.