In tenth grade, Dylan built his own computer. He and his friends liked playing video games and experimenting with visual and audio effects; eventually, he became a beta tester for Microsoft products. I often referred to him as a computer geek. I would have preferred it if he and his friends had spent more time outside, especially because we lived near some of the best hiking and skiing and snowboarding terrain in the world. But neither Tom nor I thought Dylan’s time on the computer was inherently bad. His social life did not suffer, and he’d reluctantly pull himself away to go out for dinner or watch a movie with us if we asked him to. Neither of us saw the computer as a tool for destructive or malicious behavior. If we had, we would not have allowed him to use it.
That said, Tom and I did not look at what Dylan did on his computer. This seems shockingly naive now, but it was a different time—and anyway, I would not have known how to check his browser history or usage in those days; I had only just begun using the Internet myself. I did find excuses to go in and out of Dylan’s room so I could take a peek at what he was up to. One time he was in a chat room, and he looked edgy when I peered over his shoulder. When I asked him to translate the jargon, it sounded like a typical (and dumb) teenage conversation. I knew sexual images were readily available on the Internet, and assumed they’d appeal to him, as they would to most teenage boys, although I never discovered him looking at any.
Even if I had been aware of dangerous content online, I would never have suspected Dylan to be interested in material that would lead him to hurt himself or anybody else.
? ? ?
Byron had no desire to go to college, at least not immediately. Tom and I didn’t want to be in conflict with him over our rules (no drinking, drugs, or smoking cigarettes on our property, for starters), but we worried too that Byron would struggle in a less structured environment.
After endless conversations, Tom and I went with Byron to see his counselor. The counselor asked Byron outright if he was ready to hold down a job and an apartment by himself, and Byron assured him he was. For our part, we could only hope the demands of real life would help him mature. With the counselor’s blessing, Byron and his best friend rented a cheap apartment across town, and the two of them set off from our house in a pickup truck loaded down with spare furniture, kitchen utensils, and a few boxes of food. Ever the optimist, I even included cleaning supplies.
Dylan couldn’t wait to move into his brother’s room, which was bigger and had more windows. Redecorating was a family affair. Tom and I replaced the sliding closet doors with mirrored ones, so the room looked twice as big as it had before. Dylan requested that one wall be painted a sleek black, which looked sharp with the modern black furniture Byron had left behind. Dylan put his computer against the dark wall and covered the rest of the room with posters. Tom hung a shelf over the computer so that Dylan would have a place for his CDs, and attached a fluorescent light to the underside.
For me, Dylan moving into Byron’s room marked the end of his childhood. Even though he was over six feet tall, I watched with sadness as he packed up boxes of toys from his own room and labeled them for storage. After his death, I opened boxes filled with his once-precious Lego sets. Most contained the original packaging and instructional diagrams, nearly torn along the folds from use. I was struck by how like Dylan that was, to meticulously organize even the things he was putting away for storage.
Around the time he moved into his brother’s old room, Dylan got his learner’s permit. As difficult as it was for us to watch him take this next step away from us, we were glad, too. His friends had always been generous with rides, but we lived a good fifteen or twenty minutes out of their way, and it had been annoying for him to be the only person in his group of friends too young to drive.
At first, Tom took Dylan to empty parking lots in the evening to get the feel of driving the car. Then they worked their way up to driving on city streets, freeways, and finally the twisting mountain roads. The first time we went to Byron’s new apartment for dinner, we allowed Dylan to drive us halfway. (Byron proudly presented us with a double batch of Hamburger Helper. Anticipating a shortage of vegetables on the menu, I’d brought a salad.) By August, Dylan was taking driving lessons so he could get a lower auto insurance rate.
The process leading up to Byron’s move had been painful, but once we saw him settled in his new apartment, we knew it was the right decision. “Now we can focus on Dylan,” I told Tom, except there didn’t seem to be all that much to focus on. Our younger son just seemed to stay on track. Most of the time, if he understood why a rule was in place, he’d follow it.
Maybe Dylan wasn’t as demonstrative, cuddly, or communicative as he had been when he was younger. What teenage boy is? But until he hit a patch of trouble in his junior year, I saw nothing—nothing—in our life together as a family to foreshadow the tragedy to come.
CHAPTER 7
One Mother to Another
Today, I began the task of writing condolence letters to the victims’ families. It was so hard. The tragic loss of all those children. It’s so hard, but it’s something I must do. From the heart of one mother to another.
—Journal entry, May 1999
Ever since childhood, I have found comfort in being helpful.
My grandfather threw huge picnics at the farm he owned for the people who worked at his company and for the charities he supported, and I made myself useful by rounding up paper plates and empties. At school, I preferred to help the lunch ladies clean the cafeteria than to go out to the playground at recess. I’m still like this. “Put me to work,” I say at a wedding, and I keep saying it until the host hands me something to pass or to pour.
But there was absolutely nothing I could do to help anyone else in the aftershock of the carnage and cruelty committed by my son at Columbine High School.
Concerned friends and clergy wanted to bring the families together, but the first lawsuit had been filed days after the tragedy, and our attorneys rejected the idea of face-to-face meetings outright. I can’t imagine anyone involved would have wanted to meet with me so soon after the shootings, either.
People urged Tom and me to make a public statement through the media. We did a few days after the tragedy, apologizing as well as expressing our bewilderment and grief. Even so, I felt compelled to communicate directly with the families of Dylan’s victims, and to the victims who had survived. I decided to handwrite letters of apology to each of the families.
I wasn’t foolish enough to believe there were any words that could ever suffice. But I needed to let the families know the depth of my sorrow for what they had suffered at my son’s hand. I had the idea that if I could extend some kindness, it might counterbalance Dylan’s cruelty on that horrific morning. And, although there’s nothing noble about it, I wanted them to know that although I had loved him, I was not my son.
Writing those letters remains one of the hardest things I have ever done. It took me a full month to finish them. How could I convey empathy, when even hearing my name would likely increase the suffering these families were feeling? How could I reach out, as a companion in sorrow, when my son—the person I had created and loved more than life—was the reason they were in agony? How do you say, “I’m sorry my child killed yours”?
The difficulty of writing the letters was compounded by the conflict it created within our own family. Tom was against the idea. He worried that sending an apology would be tantamount to accepting personal responsibility. Learning about the victims and how they died was excruciating for him, and he avoided it.
I felt differently. If hearing from me might bring some small measure of comfort and open the door for communication with the families, it was a chance I wanted to take. I had to do something. I hoped showing my own humanity might bring an iota of peace to people who would be forever tormented by the cruelty of what my son had done.