We have had some contact with a few of the victims’ family members over the years, and I believe it was healing, for both parties. The father of a boy who died reached out to us about a year after the tragedy. We invited him to our home in December 2001. I was stunned by his generosity of spirit and found great relief in being able to apologize to him in person for Dylan’s actions, and to express our sorrow for his terrible loss. We wept, shared photos, and talked about our children. When we parted, he said he didn’t hold us responsible. They were the most blessed words I could have hoped to hear him say.
Around the same time, the mother of one of the murdered girls asked to meet. She was forthright and kind, and I liked her immediately. We both shed a lot of tears at that meeting, but I was able to apologize, and to ask questions about her daughter. I was touched she asked about Dylan and wanted to know who he was. A person of deep faith, this mother feels her daughter’s death was predestined, and nothing could have been done to prevent it. I have told her I wish I could agree with her. But I felt a great relief to meet her, and believe she took comfort from it too.
I received a lovely note from the sister of a murdered girl, who wrote that she didn’t think parents were responsible for the actions of their children. We also received a lovely, sad letter from Dave Sanders’s granddaughter. She said she did not hate us or hold us responsible. I treasured both those letters and returned to them time and again for solace.
Four years after the depositions, eight years after the massacre, I would meet another father whose son was murdered at the school. But at the time we were deposed, I had met only two people who had lost children at the school, and thirty-six families were making claims against us. As the day approached, I had no idea what to expect or who would be there when we faced each other in the courtroom.
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Still struggling with fear, anxiety and feelings of craziness. There is no safe place to park my overburdened mind. I feel frightened, beaten, and on the brink of crossing over a line to madness and not coming back. I’m constantly aware of myself thinking about my state of mind, and about death. I was OK until these damn panics started. I was making it OK. Now I’m afraid I’ll never be OK again.
—Journal entry, July 2003
The pressure mounted as the date of the depositions approached. Over dinner one night, Tom and I had a long conversation about the afterlife.
I worried a great deal about Dylan, even after his death. I was terrified his spirit would not be allowed to rest in peace because of his crimes. It was hard enough to know Dylan had suffered in life; I could not bear the idea that he continued to suffer in death, too.
As we were getting into bed, I had a debilitating panic attack.
It was not the first panic attack I had ever experienced. I had been a nervous, fearful child, prone to late-night anxiety, but that night’s attack was the worst I’d ever had. My thoughts spiraled out of control, and I trembled and cried as my mind pitched in terror.
Those panic attacks lasted through the time of the depositions, and beyond. They would strike without warning—at the hardware store, in a meeting at work, while I was driving in the car. Like a tsunami, a sudden, overpowering surge of blinding fear would rise up in front of me, then crash down. These floods of incapacitating terror were worse, by far, than the grief. Sometimes the attacks would run into each other, one after another, and I’d lose hours, even whole afternoons. I drank gallons of chamomile tea, tried every homeopathic remedy for anxiety I could find at the health food store. I was terrified I would not be able to get through my deposition, and tortured myself with imagining what would happen if I had an anxiety attack while on the stand.
Reading my journals from that period is revealing to me now. It is clear, on every single page, that I am hanging on by a thread.
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I am not allowed to talk about what happened during the depositions, except to say it was terribly painful and (I believe) unsatisfying for everyone involved.
I can, however, share a regret. I wanted to apologize to the families in person at the depositions, but our lawyers didn’t agree. “This isn’t the time or place,” I was told. I wish I had fought harder to say those words. I believe their absence was deeply felt by everyone in the room, and continues to be, to this day. Saying I am profoundly sorry is one of the reasons I wanted to write this book.
Neuroscientists like to say behavior is the result of a complex interaction between nature and nurture. At some time in the future, we will likely be able to point to the specific combination of neurotransmitters that lead a person to commit acts of unspeakable violence. I will personally rejoice on the day neurobiologists map the precise mechanism in the brain responsible for empathy and for conscience. Needless to say, we’re not yet there. We do know, from researchers like Dr. Victoria Arango, that there are clear brain differences between people who die by suicide and people who do not. Dr. Kent Kiehl and others have demonstrated that there also appear to be some clear brain differences between people who commit homicide and people who do not.
I have spent a lot of time wondering whether Dylan had a biological predisposition toward violence—and if so, whether or not we were responsible. I did not consume alcohol while I was pregnant with Dylan. He was not abused in our home, physically, verbally, or emotionally, nor was he subjected to anyone else being abused. He was not raised in poverty, or exposed (to my knowledge) to toxins such as heavy metals, which have been connected to violent behavior. Neither of his parents abused alcohol or drugs. He was well nourished.
Even if Dylan did have a biological predisposition toward violence, biology isn’t destiny. What forces had aggravated this tendency in him? The governor of Colorado cited parenting as a causal factor in his first public appearance after the shootings. But Tom and I knew exactly what had happened in our home all those years we parented Dylan, and we were equally sure the answer wasn’t there.
This was what I wanted to say in the depositions—not because I had any thought of clearing our names, or setting the record straight, but because it was such a crucial opportunity to broaden our understanding of how tragedies like Columbine happen. Dylan did not learn violence in our home. He did not learn disconnection, or rage, or racism. He did not learn a callous indifference to human life. This I knew.
I wanted to say that Dylan had been loved. I loved him while I was holding his pudgy hand on our way to get frozen yogurt after kindergarten; while reading Dr. Seuss’s exuberant There’s a Wocket in My Pocket! to him for the thousandth time; while scrubbing the grass stains out of the knees of his pint-size Little League uniform so he could wear it to pitch the next day. I loved him while we were sharing a bowl of popcorn and watching Flight of the Phoenix together, a month before he died. I still loved him. I hated what he had done, but I still loved my son.
Morality, empathy, ethics—these weren’t one-time lessons, but embedded in everything we did with our kids. I’d taught the boys what I myself believe—that we should treat others as we wish to be treated. Dylan was expected to help our neighbors with their yard work without the expectation of payment because that’s what neighbors do, and to hold the door open for the person coming in behind him because that’s what gentlemen do.