After our trip, Dylan jumped right back into his busy social life. Nate spent the night. One evening, after studying calculus with Robyn, Dylan asked if I would help pay for prom expenses. I was floored he was interested in going to the prom at all; so, I found out later, were his friends. He seemed amused himself.
The following night, March 30, I attended a pre-graduation meeting for parents of seniors and ran into Judy Brown. Since our phone conversation about the snowball more than a year earlier, we’d seen each other only briefly, mostly after school productions, and so we were eager to catch up. Before long, our conversation veered off into our mutual interest in art—my figure drawing sessions, and some classes she’d taken. We looked at some drawings I had stashed in my car before saying good-bye. Neither one of us mentioned Eric.
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One of the most painful questions people ask suicide loss survivors is whether or not we ever hugged our kids. The question hurts, not only for the obvious reasons (only thousands of times; what kind of mother doesn’t hug her kid?) but, in my case, because of a specific incident—indeed, a specific hug—that took place in the last two weeks of Dylan’s life.
One afternoon we passed each other in the hallway at the foot of the stairs. Spontaneously, I threw my arms around him.
“I love you so much,” I told him. “You are such a wonderful person, and Dad and I are so proud of you.” He rested his left hand gently on my back, barely touching me. With the jokingly haughty air we sometimes used to thank each other for elaborate and ridiculous compliments, he thanked me. But I didn’t want him to make a joke of this, which I meant with all my heart, and so I took his thin jawbone in both of my hands and looked directly into his eyes.
“No kidding around, Dylan: I mean it. I love you so much. You are a wonderful person, and Dad and I are proud of you.”
He looked down, embarrassed, and whispered his thanks.
For years, I replayed this scene in my mind. Afraid that it would become distorted through repetition, I wrote it down. I can see it like a movie now, two figures in the hallway, his hand on the small of my back, me reaching up to hold his face. The memory of that hug is one of the most painful I hold—and the knowledge that, to this day, I have no idea what on earth Dylan could possibly have been thinking.
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On April 4, I decided to whip up a belated, last-minute dinner in honor of the combined Easter and Passover holidays, figuring I’d scrunch the two and make it a double celebration, as my family had often done when I was a child.
When I mentioned it to Dylan, he laughed in an irritated way, as if at some private joke, and told me he didn’t want to attend. He gave in when I asked him to reconsider. I spent a happy day in the kitchen cooking, and a neighbor joined us for the meal. We never did get all the way through the service, but we had a good time.
The family celebrated Tom’s birthday in early April by going out for fondue. Byron and Dylan took one car, and Tom and I rode in another, giving the boys some time to bond. It was the last time Byron was alone with his brother, and he would later tearfully recall how normal Dylan had acted.
At dinner, Byron did most of the talking. Dylan was so quiet, I fretted he wasn’t getting enough attention—an old worry, familiar to many parents, that one child will feel less loved or validated than the other one. Dylan did get a few jokes in, one so funny I laughed about it all evening. Later, when I couldn’t remember what the joke was (neither Tom nor Byron could remember, either), I was crushed that I hadn’t paid more attention.
After dinner, the four of us gathered back at the house for homemade cake and gifts. I’d found Tom a small concrete bench, a place to rest his sore joints while tending to his favorite flowers, and my two sons effortlessly carried it into the garden from the trunk of my car. Byron gave him a CD, and Dylan gave him a box of little cigars. For many years, he smoked one on Dylan’s birthday in remembrance.
Four days before the tragedy, I saw the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit with a friend at the Denver Art Museum, while Tom and Dylan studied a map of the University of Arizona to find the dorm closest to the center of campus and tried to figure out which rooms were the largest. After they were through, Dylan picked up his tuxedo. He hung the bag from his closet door to keep the contents from wrinkling. We would see it, later, in the background of one of the Basement Tapes.
Tom and I both noticed Dylan was a little agitated that week. I was sure he was nervous about the prom. Robyn was flying back to Denver on Saturday afternoon after an out-of-state church function, and her flight time would cut it close. Dylan had to choose flowers and work out the logistics of dinner and transportation; the tasks were, to say the least, out of his area of expertise.
That Friday, Dylan asked if Eric could sleep over. We agreed. The guest room hadn’t been cleaned since Nate had spent the night a couple of weeks earlier, and our sick cat Rocky had thrown up in there, so Tom and I wrestled a vacuum cleaner up the stairs and asked Dylan to clean the room and bathroom before his friend arrived.
Dylan was irritated we were making such a big deal about cleaning; he told us Eric didn’t care if the room was clean or not. I overrode his protests. “Eric may not care, but we do. If you clean your room, Dad will do the bathroom and I’ll do the guest room. It’ll go fast if we all help.” A few minutes later, Dylan left the house, saying he had a quick errand to run. I rolled my eyes, believing he was procrastinating; more likely, he was removing something he did not want us to see. After Dylan returned, we poked our heads into his room intermittently to check his progress. Neither one of us saw anything unusual.
I’d already gone to bed when Eric arrived about 10:00 p.m. He had brought a large duffel bag, so heavy he could hardly lift it, and he was dragging it over the threshold when Tom said hello. Dylan and his friends were always hauling computer parts and video equipment over to one another’s houses, so Tom didn’t think twice about the bag. He told the boys what snacks were available, said good night, and came to bed.
We slept without interruption, and when I came down to make breakfast, Eric had already gone. After all the fuss about cleaning the guest room, the bed had not been slept in at all.
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We all focused on Dylan to get him ready for the prom. It was so cute. A. came over and we took pictures. Robyn & he left at about 6, and he has a big night ahead.
—Journal entry, April 1999
On Saturday, April 17, Tom and I remained on standby at home to help Dylan get ready for the prom.
Dylan woke much calmer than the day before; he seemed to be going out of his way to convince me he wasn’t nervous. When I asked if he was concerned Robyn wouldn’t make it from the airport in time, he shrugged and said, “It’s no big deal. If we make it, we make it. If we don’t, we don’t. I’m not worried about it.”
Late afternoon, his hair still wet from his shower, Dylan hauled his tuxedo into our bedroom, where we had a full-length mirror to work with. New to formal wear, he needed Tom’s help to understand what all the tuxedo pieces were. Self-conscious in black socks, plaid boxer shorts, and a gleaming white shirt with a stiff, pleated front, he seemed to tower over his father, though there was only a two-inch difference between them.