A community fails to mourn

A sixteen year old mentally ill substance abusing young man died a violent death about a year ago.  This family (which I know quite well) have been subjected to lots of inappropriate interactions with their community.  Friends, neighbors, school people, even therapeutic helpers have said hurtful blaming things to them, people would show up at their door and want the mom to hear about all of their problems.  Teachers and school cousnelors have insensitively dragged the mom into situations inappropriate for a berevaed parent.  This has all added a tremendous amount to their overwhelming sorrow and regret. 

This has been bugging me a bunch.  Why is this happening?  It's been on my mind as I've been taking this class about death at the UW.

I've got an idea.  Please bear with my hand-drawn diagrams.

The first diagram shows the relationship between a family (parents and two children) with other entities in their community.  Friends, school service providers, community activities and even the justice system.

That's pretty normal.

If there's a tragedy; n this case, a traumatic violent death of a child (who had issues), the second diagram shows what you might expect.  The community comes together and each person does their best to support the family,.

But what if, the relationship between the family and the community is not normal.  What if one of the children is a mentally ill (sociopathic?) young man who's coming into his own.  He manipulates the school and therapists to create all sorts of drama. The more he does it, the better he gets.  Much of this results in a lot of blame being heaped on the parents.  The parents feel isolated and shunned.  The young person sets all of these community parts (including the justice system) into all kinds of crazy ways.

What if it looks like this?

No wonder the community couldn't support them.  Everybody was going every which way.