ABSTRACT
This chapter is about how families find solace and comfort after the violent death
of a family member. It is about how families memorialize those who died and how
these same families’ actions may prevent further violence. Perpetrated in war,
violence may also be a concomitant of environmental phenomena such as
earthquakes, fire, or flood. This chapter, however, focuses on violence that occurs
in domestic and community situations when the death is the result of an act of
violence, and the victim may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong
time. In such cases, there is a perpetrator who may need to be identified. The
mourners’ grief is more public as they are often involved with the police, the
courts, and the media. How do the survivors make sense of a senseless act of
violence? The pain of the loss is real. Some think that when the perpetrator is
caught, the family can find “closure.” The case may be closed for the police, or for
the courts, but the survivors must go on with their lives, with a new configuration
of relationships. How do survivors deal with their grief, with their pain, and having
lost a sense of safety in the world?
