What the mourning rules actually cover

In outline, and this is a fiqh matter to take to a scholar rather than a settled position of ours, the tradition permits weeping and the expression of sorrow, prohibits deliberate loud wailing, and prohibits tearing clothes, scratching the face and shaving the hair in grief. General mourning is kept to three days, and for a widow the period is four months and ten days.

The thing to notice is what those rules are about. They govern the outward observances of a formal state of mourning. They are not a deadline on sorrow, and there is no text that says your grief has an expiry date on it.

That distinction between the formal state and the private sorrow is worth confirming with a scholar you trust, because it is the thing most often got wrong when somebody quotes the three days at a person in month four.

The report that carries the three days is worth reading whole, and it is below. Zaynab bint Abi Salama went to Umm Habiba, the wife of the Prophet, on the day her father died. Umm Habiba called for perfume, touched it to her cheeks, and said that by Allah she had no need of perfume, only that she had heard what she had heard. The rule is being demonstrated by a woman touching scent. It is not being demonstrated by a woman who has stopped grieving.