Brief time in front of grave around memorial showing grief (8)
I believe the answer is:
mourning
'grief' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'brief time in front of grave around memorial' is the wordplay.
'brief time' becomes 'mo' (short for moment).
'front of' suggests taking the first letters.
'around' indicates putting letters inside.
'memorial' becomes 'urn' (memorial vessel holding someone's ashes).
The first letter of 'grave' is 'g'.
'mo'+'in'+'g'='moing'
'moing' placed around 'urn' is 'MOURNING'.
'showing' is the link.
(Other definitions for mourning that I've seen before include "Feeling loss" , "Black clothing" , "Grieving" , "Sorrowing" , "wearing black" .)