Mother's Reckoning : Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (9781101902769)

by Klebold, Sue; Solomon, Andrew (INT)

  The biggest stressor in our lives, though, was the rapid and alarming decline in Tom’s health. For years he’d complained of joint pain: stiff knees, a sore neck, sharp shooting pains he described as ice picks in his toes. He experienced periods of unexplained weakness, and a series of crippling migraines like little strokes, which left him temporarily unable to see or to speak. A diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, right about the time Dylan entered high school, explained the chronic pain. RA is degenerative, so Tom was afraid his health would continue to worsen, leaving him disabled and unable to work.

  One morning at breakfast, while he was lifting a carton of orange juice, a tendon snapped in his arm. The two of us stared dumbly at his thumb, which was no longer a working digit, but dangled loosely from his hand. Tom is a bull for whom no project is too daunting, a man who’d think nothing of working an eighteen-hour day swinging a sledgehammer, who’d lay concrete until his knees bled—and he’d been vanquished by a half-gallon of Tropicana. He was falling apart.

  The constant pain, combined with his uncertainty, meant he couldn’t work the long days expected of a geophysicist. This added to our financial anxiety, especially with Dylan’s college tuition looming ahead of us. He cut back on projects around the house, although our fixer-upper still needed a lot of fixing up. And he couldn’t go for his beloved evening runs, which had been his primary means of staying in shape, and a way for him to relieve stress.

  We all could have used a better stress-relief valve. Between our money worries, Tom’s increasingly serious illness, my new job, and Byron’s instability, I felt like a captain keeping a ship on course through a storm while reassuring my panicking crew. Most nights, I would fall into bed so exhausted I could barely manage to brush my teeth, and often lay awake worrying that our family wouldn’t be okay at all.

  Disruptions like these—especially money worries, and a parent undergoing a health crisis—are risk factors for depression and suicide in teens, and a combination of them significantly increases risk.

  We did notice Dylan was crankier with us than usual. We had a gentle household, overall. We weren’t door slammers or yellers, and our boys weren’t allowed to talk back, or to use bad language in front of us or any other adult. Even during the worst of our struggles with Byron, I was proud that we were always able to talk civilly with each other. Being a teenager, Dylan managed anyway to convey his sullenness and irritation. If I asked him to slow down when he was driving, he’d reward me with a long, slow sigh, and he’d drive like a granny for a couple of miles to make sure I got the point. “Would you please change your sheets before you go out?” I’d ask, and he’d roll his eyes almost imperceptibly as he was turning away to go do it.

  I didn’t enjoy this behavior, but took it in stride. Lots of other moms were dealing with much worse in the disrespect department. With Dylan, there were still flashes of sweetness to keep us from worrying too much. When I worried about his mood swings or his irritability, he’d cheerfully run an errand with me, or join Tom and me for dinner and keep us laughing until we forgot our concerns. He wasn’t the kind of kid you could stay worried about for long.

  Until he was. Because that year, as if everything going on with Tom and Byron and our finances weren’t enough, the one family member who had always seemed to get through life without much trouble began to have problems of his own.

  • • •

  Dylan turned sixteen in September. When Tom and I suggested a party, he demurred: “Guys, I don’t want to make a big deal out of this.” But a sixteenth birthday is a milestone, and Tom and I wanted to mark it for Dylan.

  Our family tradition was to go to a restaurant of the celebrant’s choice. That year, Dylan chose a barbecue restaurant with a 1940s classic movie theme. Byron couldn’t get anyone to cover him at work. While we hated for him to miss his brother’s birthday celebration, we were pleased to see evidence of his work ethic and supported his decision not to attend. Plus, Tom and I had a surprise planned: although Dylan’s friend Zack also had to work that night, we’d arranged for Eric and Nate to meet us at the restaurant.

  Dylan was genuinely surprised to see his friends. So surprised, it took him half the evening to loosen up and start enjoying himself. I was sympathetic. He was attuned to the slightest of social discomforts, though Nate and Eric found us much less embarrassing than he did. Dylan knew of our intolerance for rudeness and picky eaters as well, and was probably worried about how his friends would behave. Over the course of the night, though, he relaxed, and with good humor he thanked us for overriding his protests and surprising him. But the roller-coaster ride was about to begin.

  Later that month, he woke up in the middle of the night with terrible stomach pains. We were concerned enough to take him to the emergency room, where they ruled out appendicitis and everything else. Puzzled, the doctors released him, and he appeared to recover completely. I would later learn that unexplained somatic symptoms, particularly abdominal pain, may be a marker for depression.

  Then, two days later, at the beginning of October 1997, Tom received a call from the school. Dylan had been suspended. The news was a shock. It was the first time either of our boys had been disciplined at school.

  Dylan’s interest in server maintenance and network administration had led one of the teachers to ask if he and his friend Zack would help maintain the Columbine High School computer system. Digging around in the system, the boys discovered a list of locker combinations. Dylan opened and closed one or two locker doors to see if the list was current, then transferred the data to a disk and shared it with Eric. Zack took it a little further and left a note in the locker of his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. The boys were caught, and an administrator at the school informed us that Dylan was to be suspended for five days.

  Tom and I thought the punishment was unnecessarily harsh. Dylan deserved a disciplinary consequence for his involvement; he had no right to dig into school records. But he’d only opened the lockers to see if he could, and closed them without touching anything. Tom in particular felt the punishment failed to show the boys why the offense was wrong, and alienated them from their school when it would be better for them to feel connected to it. We both hoped the school would consider a warning or probationary period instead of banishment, and arranged to meet with the dean.

  It was not a good meeting. There was nothing in the rulebook to cover what the boys had done. In the absence of written policy, the administration had decided to treat the boys as if they had brought a weapon to school.

  I was shocked. What they had done seemed closer to sneaking into the girls’ bathroom, or an act of academic dishonesty like plagiarism or cheating. I wasn’t minimizing the offense (nor would I have thought it was okay to sneak into the girls’ bathroom). But the boys hadn’t brought a weapon to school, or done anything like it.

  We asked if the administration might consider other consequences. The boys could donate extra time to maintain equipment, or clean out a storage room. The dean told us that the district superintendent was aware of the incident and wanted it to be handled with a high level of severity; we could speak with the computer teacher if we had additional questions. An administrator myself, I recognized the dean’s need to get the papers signed so she could move on to the next problem.

  While we waited for the computer teacher, I got a moment alone with Dylan. I wanted him to understand the consequences of what he had done. He was fond of the teacher, and I told Dylan he could have gotten him fired, or caused the elimination of the program altogether. There was no defiance or cynicism on Dylan’s face, just sadness. I was satisfied to see he understood. The teacher, when he joined us, seemed shaken but kind, and primarily concerned about Dylan. There were apologies all around. What came next, however, was more painful for Dylan than the suspension: the teacher told Dylan he could no longer help with the school’s computers.

  As we drove away from the school, Dylan seemed numb. I asked him if he thought he’d be okay; he told me he would. He was ta
king accelerated chemistry, trigonometry, world history, fourth-year French, computers, and composition—a fairly heavy workload of difficult classes, and I asked how he would keep up during his suspension. He said he could get the assignments from his friends. When Dylan asked what I was thinking, I told him the truth. “I don’t understand the decision, and I don’t agree with it, but I’m going to support it. This will be resolved quickly if we comply with the ruling, and I don’t want to make a bad situation worse by alienating you from the people running the school.” He nodded, to show he understood.

  Tom was home with Dylan most of the time during the suspension. During one conversation, Dylan complained that the school’s administration favored athletes, making excuses for them while coming down hard on others for lesser offenses. In Dylan’s mind, school was a place where things were “not fair.” Yet he seemed to take the suspension in stride, and after the five days were up, all three of us smoothed our ruffled feathers and moved on.

  In October, Dylan got his driver’s license. I was nervous about him driving around without an adult in the car, but he was relieved not to have to depend on us or on his friends for rides. Tom’s hobby was finding beat-up old cars at bargain prices. As soon as he felt Dylan could handle a car responsibly, he bought a black BMW for $400. It had a broken window and some interior damage, not to mention it was light-years away from being able to pass Colorado’s emissions tests, but the two of them weren’t daunted by the amount of work it needed, and they both got a kick out of the fact that the car was sixteen years old—exactly Dylan’s age. Dylan agreed to help pay for gas and insurance.

  After Dylan got his license, I told my sister it was as if he’d grown wings. Most of his friends were still in the suburb we’d left behind when we’d moved out to the foothills. From a safety standpoint, we’d rather he stay overnight with them than drive home late on the canyon road, but I didn’t like feeling so separate. Tom reminded me I had to let him grow up.

  He and Nate and Eric and Zack went bowling, played pool, or went to the movies. Occasionally there were supervised parties. Raising teenagers was not new to us, and Dylan faced the usual barrage of questions when leaving the house: “Where are you going? Who’s going to be there? Who’s driving? Will there be drinking? Will the parents be home? Leave us a phone number.” We checked often, and Dylan was always exactly where he said he’d be. The only time he ever came home late for curfew, he’d gone to the rescue of a friend stranded after a fender bender.

  Tom and I did feel Dylan was withdrawing from us that year. He’d quit Blackjack Pizza so he could look for a job working with computers, but he hadn’t found one, and he wasn’t doing sound for any school productions that fall. It was nice to have him home at night, though I worried he had too much time on his hands, and thought he spent too much time on his computer. Withdrawal, of course, can be a sign of depression in adults and teens, but Tom and I didn’t identify Dylan’s desire for privacy as a red flag. When he was in his room, he was either talking to friends on the phone or interacting with them on the computer. He wasn’t withdrawing from others; if anything, his social life had taken off.

  The unsettled feeling with which we’d begun the fall continued as the days grew cooler. One of my favorite teachers at the Art Students League died suddenly of a heart attack. My brother’s wife was hospitalized, and my sister, who had struggled for years with health problems, was unwell again. Tom’s health continued to deteriorate. In November he had surgery to fix the broken tendon in his arm, and he scheduled a shoulder surgery for January. He still couldn’t work much, and our financial concerns intensified.

  A friend consoled me with the Winston Churchill chestnut: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” But the bad news kept coming. We got a call from Byron in the emergency room; he needed stitches in three places after standing up to a racist ex-skinhead. That night, I finally allowed myself to acknowledge my despair over Byron’s situation. Of course, I was proud of him for standing up for his beliefs, but his decisions kept getting him into trouble, and nothing we did—therapy, support, tough love—seemed to help.

  Thanksgiving was a rare bright spot in that dark season. Eight of my extended family members came to stay, a hectic change from the quiet life we usually led. My brother and my sister and I have always been close. We all talk too fast and laugh loudly; getting a word in is like merging onto the autobahn. Dylan found the chaos a little overwhelming, but I loved having my family around.

  My dad owned neighborhood movie theaters—my first job was selling popcorn at a concession stand—and we’re passionate about old movies. We all love books and music, too. Not surprisingly, we like to play charades. Dylan usually preferred to play poker with the adults, but that year he gave in to the begging and joined us for a round or two of charades. I was so proud of how funny and clever he was, and delighted that his innate shyness hadn’t prevented him from joining in.

  There was no way to know that, within a few short months, everything would fall apart, and Dylan would once again rise to the top of our family’s worries.

  • • •

  In early January of 1998, Dylan told Tom about his frustration with a couple of kids at school who were “really asking for it.” The kids were freshmen, and Tom resisted the temptation to laugh: Dylan was six feet four inches tall, and a junior. Dylan told us he wanted to get some guys together to confront the boys. Tom and I told him not to give them the satisfaction of a response. I was worried someone would be hurt, and Tom was worried Dylan would embarrass himself by engaging with freshmen.

  Dylan could not let it go. Without our knowledge, he and Eric rounded up some friends. They confronted the kids and told them to meet them at a spot away from school, but the younger boys never appeared. Tom and I found out about the planned rumble after the fact. Dylan believed he had handled the situation effectively, but we were upset and told him so. At least, I thought, no one had been hurt.

  Later that month, I got a phone call from Judy Brown, the mother of Dylan’s friend Brooks. Brooks and Eric had gotten into a fight at school, and Eric had thrown a snowball at Brooks’s car, damaging the windshield. Judy was furious and launched into a tirade against Eric, which perplexed me. It seemed to me that the boys shared responsibility for the incident, and I didn’t understand her impulse to get involved when they’d resolved it themselves. The ferocity of her hatred for Eric seemed like an overreaction to me.

  Not long after the call from Judy, Tom got another call from the school. Four months after his suspension for hacking the locker combinations, Dylan had deliberately scratched the face of someone’s locker with a key. He was given an in-school suspension for a day and owed the school seventy dollars to pay for a new door. Tom went over to write the check. He asked the dean about the freshmen, certain that Dylan would not have lashed out without being provoked. The dean acknowledged they had a particularly “rowdy” group of freshmen, acting as if they “owned the place,” but assured Tom that the administration was dealing with it.

  We talked with Dylan that night. Tom was irritated with him for destroying property and irritated with the school for charging so much money to repaint a locker door. Dylan gave Tom the cash he had on hand and promised to work off the rest of the debt by doing extra chores. I told Dylan he couldn’t allow the obnoxious behavior of others to upset him.

  I don’t know whose locker Dylan scratched, or if it was simply the one in front of him when the destructive urge hit. I have read in the years since that the scratch read “Fags”—a slur I have also read was frequently leveled against Dylan and Eric in the hallways at Columbine—but we did not hear that from the school.

  It is, of course, not ridiculous that a younger boy could bully an older one. I simply never imagined anyone would bully Dylan. My idea of the type of kid targeted by bullies was as unrealistic a stereotype as my idea of the kind of person who dies by suicide. The way he dressed and wore his hair was intended to set him apart from the preppy, affluent, suburb
an mainstream, but it was not outrageous. We also believed Dylan’s height would be intimidating, because he told us it was. Once, during sophomore year, Dylan said something to Tom about “hating the jocks.” Tom asked him if they were giving him a hard time, and Dylan answered with confidence: “They don’t bother me. I’m six four. But they sure give Eric hell.”

  Since the tragedy, much has been written about the school culture at Columbine High School, and Dylan’s place in it. Regina Huerter, director of Juvenile Diversion for the Denver district attorney’s office, compiled a report in 2000, and Ralph W. Larkin independently confirmed many of her findings in his exhaustively researched 2007 book, Comprehending Columbine. Both researchers found Columbine High School was academically excellent and deeply conservative; that much we knew. But they also describe a school with a pervasive culture of bullying—in particular, a group of athletes who harassed, humiliated, and physically assaulted kids at the bottom of the social ladder. Larkin also points to proselytizing and intimidation by evangelical Christian students, a self-appointed moral elite who perceived the kids who dressed differently as evil and targeted them.

  This research lines up with the many anecdotal stories we heard after the tragedy from kids who suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their classmates at the school. One story in particular stands out. When Tom went to the sheriff’s department in the fall of 1999 to retrieve Dylan’s car from the impound lot, a county employee offered his condolences and told him how his own son’s hair had been set on fire by some other students while he was attending Columbine High School. The boy, who sustained fairly serious burns to his scalp, refused to allow his father to go to the administration because he was afraid it would make the situation worse. Shaking with anger as he spoke, though the incident was no longer recent, the outraged dad told Tom he had wanted to take the school apart “brick by brick.”