Grief gets an expiration date, just like us

> We medicalize grief because we fear it.

I think this is just incorrect. You are not obligated to seek treatment for most medical problems[1]. The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in and when people enter a situation where they may need external help. One of the diagnostic criteria, which this article mentions, is that your grief is disrupting your life - but despite what this article claims they have misunderstood that criteria. Of course grief changes your routines and life. That change only becomes "disruptive" if you feel the change has somehow gone too far or you are struggling to undo it. This writer is doing neither and therefor does not meet the diagnostic criteria for disordered grief. They are grieving normally and the medical literate supports that understanding.

There are of course medical professionals who use diagnostic criteria as cudgels. Trying to force people to become patients in order to enforce their idea of what someone "should" want. This is a problem but it is a problem that the official diagnostic guidelines try to avoid. For those who are interested in this kind of problem with our medical system might look into the professional philosophy of doctors (generally arrayed around identifying and curing disease) and nursing (generally arrayed around making the patient comfortable as possible). I tend to think the nursing model is the more useful and sensible of the two - even though, of course, if one wants to cure a disease a doctor is helpful.

[1] There are very few diseases, such as tuberculosis, where you can be forced to treat the disease.

Further: by defining the criteria under which a condition becomes medically treatable, other parts of the healthcare system, such as insurance (private or government-funded), treatment protocols, and the like, come into play. Individuals should they choose to seek treatment are then able to do so within a much larger system.

By making the criteria reasonably loose and readily met, such a definition also minimises the number of individuals who would benefit from treatment who are excluded from being able to do so. This would include those who are very much unable to function or face larger grief-related risks.

We medicalise grief not because we fear it, but because there are genuinely useful therapies which may be of use to some, and denying them that merely compounds suffering.

And yes, absolutely, grief ultimately is a lifelong experience. You never stop missing that which you've lost, so long as you have the capacities of memory, reason, and feeling. That is not what the clinical definition is about.