A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy

Dylan met his friend Zack freshman year. Zack’s dad was a university professor turned administrator, and his mom ran the children’s youth group at the church we’d attended when the boys were younger. Zack was friendly and outgoing, with a stocky build, a round face, and short brown hair. His house was ground zero for all kinds of zany activity—someone always seemed to be barbecuing or going boating or throwing a pool party—and Dylan spent a lot of time there. I was especially pleased by Dylan’s friendship with Zack, because of how gregarious and outgoing Zack was. He didn’t mind being the center of attention, which drew Dylan out a little.

Both Zack and Dylan were interested in technology. One summer, they hit rummage sales in Zack’s neighborhood for old telephone equipment, determined to build a portable telephone system. (This was before cell phones.) The boys were proud of the contraption they came up with—an old telephone bolted to a sprung suitcase—and they got it working well enough to cause some static on the phone system in our house.

It was Zack who got Dylan interested in doing sound tech for theater productions at the end of their sophomore year. After watching a production of Bye Bye Birdie, I visited Dyl in the sound booth and was impressed by his command of the many switches and levers on the complicated board. Dylan loved it. He spent hours at rehearsals, and experimented with manipulating sounds on his computer to make an original soundtrack for a production of Frankenstein directed by his friend Brooks. People occasionally approached him to run the sound system for their talent shows, church events, and less formal after-school productions.

Zack was the first of Dylan’s friends to have a girlfriend. Dylan was jealous of his friend’s good fortune, but nonetheless became friends with Zack’s girlfriend, Devon. After Dylan’s death, Devon made a book of photographs and stories about him for me. What struck me was how much she trusted in and confided in Dylan. When her feelings were hurt or when she had conflicts with others, it was Dylan she turned to for support: “I would call Dylan on the phone or talk to him on the computer. It was the best therapy I could hope for. Dylan was the best listener I had ever met.”

Eric was the fourth member of the crew. Dylan and Eric had also met in junior high school. Eric’s dad had been in the military, and he’d retired to the Denver area; the family was still quite new there when Eric and Dylan met. We met the Harrises when the boys started hanging out, and we liked them, although we didn’t see them socially. At the end of eighth grade, Dylan and Eric were both recognized for their achievement in math. When they walked up to the stage to accept their awards, I whispered to Tom that they looked like two peas in a pod. (This was before Dylan’s growth spurt.)

In junior high, Dylan and Eric watched tons of movies together, and loved to go bowling. One time, they built a contraption to launch potatoes from one side of a pocket park to another. As they grew older, they added to their interests an attraction to girls, computer games, and music, as well as baseball games and concerts. In high school, Eric remained small and relatively slight, while Dylan shot up in height. Eric was older, and got his license before Dylan.

Their friendship didn’t seem any more intense than Dylan’s relationships with other boys; if anything, I would have said that Dylan was closer to Nate. It did seem more private, somehow. I never felt as close to Eric as I did to Nate and Zack, although he was always respectful and perfectly polite when he was around Tom and me. I don’t remember him asking me any questions, or volunteering ridiculous stories about Dylan, the way Zack and Nate did, but he was clearly smart, friendly, and funny.

Perhaps it’s significant I don’t have the same kinds of memories of connecting with Eric that I do with Dylan’s other friends. I wonder how much of that has to do with spending time with Zack and Nate after Dylan’s death, and the fact that I had the privilege of seeing them as they grew into adulthood. I still talk to Nate; he checks in with me at holiday time, and comes to visit when he’s in town. I do know that we did not perceive there to be anything unusual or unsettling about Eric, or about his friendship with Dylan prior to the trouble they had near the end of junior year, or Tom and I would not have permitted it to continue.

Dylan didn’t have a girlfriend in high school, but he and his other friends did hang out with girls; “herd dating” was common among their age group. He met his prom date, Robyn, in class; they studied calculus together. When Dylan first started spending time with Robyn, I peppered him with questions about her and her family, as I did about all of his friends. He laughed: “Believe me, Mom: you have nothing to worry about with Robyn. She’s exactly the kind of person you’d want me to be with, an A student.” When I asked what she was like, Dylan shrugged and told me, “She’s just a nice person.” I met her a few days later, and realized Dylan had been right: Robyn was lovely. I was impressed by how comfortable she seemed around Tom and me.

Before Dylan and his friends could drive, it was easy to interact with them and get to know their parents because the boys needed transportation in order to get together. Tom and I always stopped in to say hi to the other parents and to coordinate plans when we were dropping Dylan off. It made me feel good to know we could speak freely with one another about our children if we had concerns, though we almost never had cause.

When Dylan and his friends were old enough to work, his closest friends ended up working at Blackjack Pizza. Zack got a job there first; Dylan joined him a little while after, and Eric and Nate after that. Dylan bragged about his ability to make a great pizza quickly. When paychecks started rolling in, I helped him open checking and savings accounts at the bank, and after he died, I found neat folders containing his bank statements, payment stubs, and tax information. Tom or I would drop him off and pick him up from work if he couldn’t get a ride from one of his friends. We both got a kick out of calling to find out what time he needed to be picked up; it was the only time we got to hear Dylan’s professional customer service voice.

Dylan’s high school grades ebbed and flowed with his level of enthusiasm for the subject and the teacher. It disappointed us that he was not fulfilling his academic potential as he had in elementary school. On the other hand, I was relieved to see him lighten up. When he was younger, Dylan’s perfectionism had frustrated him, and sometimes frustrated us—although I could relate. So I didn’t mind when his orderly room turned into the more typical teenage sty. He’d eventually find areas of interest he’d excel in, just as Tom and I had; my own grades had been mediocre until graduate school.

I have since learned that perfectionism is frequently a characteristic of kids with special abilities. Ironically, it can sometimes undermine their potential. A mistake or setback that most kids would shrug off can devastate a child with unrealistic and unattainable standards. It can lower their self-esteem, causing them to disengage from the intellectual challenges that once fired them up. In retrospect, I believe that Dylan’s innate perfectionism, and our inability to help him manage his unrealistic expectations for himself, contributed to his feelings of alienation at the end of his life.

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Dylan planned to major in computer science at college. Like his dad, he loved to tinker, and they did a lot of that together: customizing speakers and fixing up cars. He and Tom also liked to play pranks on one another, like setting each other’s computer to surprise the user with obnoxious sounds when the machine was turned on, such as a dog “singing” a Christmas carol.

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