My understanding of "fading" is that it isn't death at all; it is when the Elven spirit overwhelms the body to where the Elf is invisible to the eyes of we mere mortals.

"Death of grief"...a whole different can of worms!

I'm actually in the midst of working on an essay, trying to resolve this, because I've posed the question of fading vs. death of grief before and only gotten a tug-o-war between the "yes they're the same!" people and the "no they're not!" people with no real answers. So I'm going to avoid commenting on this issue further until I finish my research.