It somehow happens that to teach hard lessons, you must affect the vitality of an otherwise strong man, his mother, and the family. It taught me a lot about disenfranchised grief, which is grief that is unacknowledged and unvalued. Families would not show up to grieve their children dying of AIDS and disowned many of them at death. I remember calling the parents of a young man who had died of AIDS and informing them as gently as I could that their son had died. The father denied having a son.
