Kirk,
I understand that the folder needs to close and yes, command N works great to get a blank contact sheet and start fresh, but if you have a large directory tree with many sub folders, it takes a while to get it all expanded again. Would it be possible that when the folder closed, it automatically opened up with the parent folder in view? What it currently does seems to be not a standard. In Windows and on OSX when deleting a folder it won't close the open finder window, it just deletes the folder and shows the updated parent directory. No surprises.
As I otherwise stated, I can just make sure that I don't have the current folder that I want to delete open as a contact sheet and then I will circumvent all the above.
...Mikael