The isolation was terrible. My anxiety levels were sky-high, and I felt very disconnected. We were not in communication with the Harrises. The one person in the world who might have been able to understand what I was going through was Tom, but the divide that had sprung up between us in the earliest days after the tragedy continued to widen.
This is not unusual, of course. Although the statistics you’ve heard about the likelihood of divorce after the death of a child are probably inflated, most marriages do suffer immense disruption. One often-cited reason is that women and men may grieve the loss differently: men tend to grieve the loss of the person the child would have become, while women tend to grieve the child they remember.
That divide was true for us. I incessantly reviewed memories of Dylan as a baby, a toddler, a child, and a teenager, while Tom focused on everything Dylan would never do because he was dead. This focus on Dylan’s lost future chafed me, as if Tom were pressuring Dylan posthumously to fill his fatherly expectations. The things we fought about seem unimportant to me now. We were lashed together, back to back, at the center of this terrible storm, but sometimes it felt worse to be with someone than to be alone.
Our coping mechanisms were often in conflict, too. I had always been more social and extroverted, while Tom preferred solitude. The tragedy exaggerated our respective orientations. As stressful as it was to expose myself to hatred and judgment, my reemergence into the world at large exposed me to kindness and generosity, too. Interacting with other people also meant my denial could not become entrenched. An unpleasant conversation might hurt my feelings and set me back temporarily, but ultimately I believed engaging with the outside world was helping me to come to terms with reality.
While I was pushing myself to get back out in the world, though, Tom was becoming increasingly private. I wanted to throw open the doors, and Tom wanted to circle the wagons. More and more, I found I was leaving him to it.
? ? ?
I sang sad songs and cried all the way to work. I could barely walk. I moved in slow motion. The words “Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone” described how I felt. I got to work, sat at my desk and cried. I thought I might go home because I didn’t feel like working, then realized that home would be worse. Somehow, I eased into my work day and eventually the weight lifted and I began to concentrate on work.
—Journal entry, August 1999
My life split into two hemispheres: the grinding tumult of my personal life, and the quiet order of work.
My concentration grew. Every once in a while, for a minute or two or five or fifteen, I’d become absorbed enough to forget what I was grappling with. Those moments, when they happened, were a gift. Not only did they provide me with respite, but they connected me with the person I’d been before the tragedy: a reliable, capable person who could make a difference.
Just as our friends were opening up to us about their own adolescent traumas and transgressions, so did my coworkers begin to share their personal experiences of shame and loss. Once again, I realized there was a vast wellspring of pain and suffering in the world, one I was now irrevocably tapped in to.
One coworker’s son was serving a prison sentence for attempted murder. Another shared her firsthand experience with depression, suicidal thoughts, and psychiatric hospitalization. Hearing these stories was both an honor and a lesson. When my associates entrusted me with their own painful histories, it reminded me that my crisis, as enormous and inescapable as it felt, was just my crisis. Other people suffered. They endured terrible things, and they went on.
It was good to be able to offer comfort, too, however meager. I didn’t have anything profound to say, and anyway, who wanted advice from the mother of a murderer? But I could give, just by listening.
As I wrote in my journal,
I’ve learned two important things. One, that there are many good, kind people out there. And two, there are many people who have suffered greatly and who keep going with strength and courage. These are the ones who can eventually support others. I hope I can be of use to someone some day.
It would be a long road.
The stripping away of my identity showed me how tied up I had been, my whole life, with ego. I had always wanted to be liked, and had reveled in being a productive member of my community. I chose work through which I could help others; feeling good about what I was doing had always been more important than making tons of money. I had taken great pride in my sons, in the family Tom and I had built, and in being a good mother. After Columbine, none of that could be true anymore. I wasn’t just a bad mother, but the worst mother who ever was, openly hated on the front page of my local paper. Far from being liked and respected, the best I could hope for was that the people around me could find some measure of compassion along with their horror and judgment.
The challenge for myself was even steeper. I would never really be able to move beyond what Dylan had done. Like a cattle brand, the events at Columbine High School and my son’s role in them had become an indelible part of who I was. To survive, I would have to find a way to live in this new reality.
Short of ending my own life, there wasn’t anything I could do about what the rest of the world thought. My new and greatest hope was simply integration: the old Sue with the new.
CHAPTER 10
The End of Denial
Right now all I want to do is die. Tom keeps saying he wishes he had never been born. Dylan was so loved, but he didn’t feel loved. I don’t think he loved anyone or anything. How did it happen? I didn’t know the boy I saw [on those tapes] today.
My relationship with Dylan in my head and heart has changed.
—Journal entry, October 1999
In October, six months after Columbine, the sheriff’s department agreed to share the evidence they’d collected. They invited Tom and me to come in for a presentation of the material.
My reaction to this news was complicated. After months of speculation and rumor and misinformation, it was a relief to know we would finally have the truth. At the same time (and for the same reason), I was petrified. As I wrote the week before: The meeting will take more courage than I can muster. I can only have my own little construct of what really happened until I speak with the investigators. I don’t want them to destroy the Dylan I am holding on to in my mind.
Two days before we were scheduled to go in, Gary Lozow called. The sheriff’s department had told him they would be presenting video evidence as part of their report, and wanted to warn us that seeing it might well be “more painful than April twentieth.”
Gary assumed they were referring to surveillance tape. Tom said he’d refuse to watch footage of the massacre. I couldn’t believe we were even discussing such a thing. If I had to see Dylan killing people, I’d go mad.
The night before the meeting, Tom and I compiled a list of questions. We were still convinced that Dylan had either been a reluctant participant or accidentally become entangled in something bigger than he understood at the time. We’d heard a rumor that military training materials on brainwashing techniques had been found in the Harris home, which had refueled our belief that Dylan had been another victim of the tragedy. It was plausible; Mr. Harris did have a military background. I entertained fantasies that we’d be able to hold a public memorial service.
But that was only a moment. I was coming to understand how fragile a construct we had created. Denial had been a necessary—indeed, perhaps a lifesaving—defense mechanism for me. As time went on, though, it was becoming more difficult to sustain. Much of what was reported in the media was wrong, which reinforced our skepticism. But we knew that Dylan had participated in the purchase of guns, and there were many credible eyewitness reports of Dylan shooting kids, and of the hateful things he’d said. The cracks in my cobbled-together belief system were beginning to widen.
As I suspected, the meeting at the sheriff’s office would blow them wide open.