The letter written by Whitney's mother is painful to read. But I understand where she is in her reaction to the loss of her child. Perhaps some here may remember that just over six months ago, I, too, lost my adult son, an active JW who was murdered (not by a fellow JW, but that is no consolation for me).
Early on, I felt compelled to write thank you letters and the like to express my gratitude for community support in the aftermath of my son's murder (although I never thought or said that any consequence or response could compensate for or justify what happened to my son and to all of us who love him). The experience of loss and grief is extremely complex and individual, but I see two important elements in understanding the response/letter of Whitney's mother.
First, there is the overwhelming and consuming need to find/create/discover/manufacture meaning in what seems utterly meaningless and indescribably cruel, the murder of one's child. For an active JW, that search for meaning is going to be set in a JW paradigm, which will predictably be cast as a way of saving worldly people for Jehovah. Certainly, it is my feeling that this grieving mother may find such clichéd and cloying sentiments quite hollow once she has time to breathe and begin to orient herself to the new reality in which she now lives.
Secondly, JWs are indoctrinated to see 'worldly people' as lacking human kindness and compassion, and most certainly unable to act on those feelings. I have not been a JW for 10 years, but I was one for over 27, and even for me, there was surprise at the open-hearted community response to my son's tragedy. Not that I still see non-JWs as without compassion, more like I just never thought I would see it directed at me. This mother is probably genuinely surprised, as well. Then, too, there is the urge to grasp at any extended hand of light in a life that has suddenly darkened in the worst way possible. Not to mention that there may be a lot of subtle pressure on her to steer any response to events away from "bringing reproach upon Jehovah's name" with the scandalous fact that Whitney's murderer is also a JW, and a sexually deviant one at that.
I cry every day for my son, sometimes only in my mind and sometimes with hot, desperate tears. Whitney's mother, like me, is now a different person than she was before her child was murdered. She does not yet know who that person is to be (and neither do I for that matter, in my own case), but she is frantically trying to cling to the tattered shreds of who she was when her daughter still smiled and hugged her last. That would be a JW who has been taught that no sacrifice is too great to draw another body into the Kingdom Hall, even the loss of one's child. After all, how many JWs have lost children to the blood doctrine and tried to make child martyrdom look like a hidden miracle?
I am very sad for Whitney's stricken mother, and her letters and statements here and now are only rationalizing cries in a world that for her has gone insane.