I said as gently as possible, “Please prepare yourself for the worst. The police are here. They think Dylan is involved.” As she protested, I repeated what I had already said. What had been inconceivable hours before had already begun to solidify into a new and horrible reality. Just as nebulous shapes resolve into letters and numbers with every progressive click of the machine at the eye doctor’s, so was the magnitude of the horror starting to come into focus for me. Everything was still an incomprehensible blur, but I already knew two things: this would not be the case for much longer, and the confusion was resolving into a truth I did not believe I could bear.
I promised my aunt I would be in touch, and hung up to keep the line open for communication from the school.
As the shadows lengthened, time slowed. Tom and I muddled through our uncertainty in hushed whispers. We had no choice but to accept Dylan’s involvement, but neither of us could believe he had participated in a shooting under his own free will. He must have become mixed up with a criminal, somehow, or a group of them, who forced him to participate. We even considered that someone had threatened to harm us, and he had gone along in order to protect us. Maybe he had gone into the school thinking it was a harmless joke, some kind of theater, only to learn at the last minute he was using live ammunition?
I simply could not, would not, believe Dylan participated voluntarily in hurting people. If he had, the kind, funny, goofy kid that we loved so much must have been tricked, threatened, coerced, or even drugged into doing it.
Later we would learn that Dylan’s friends spun similar explanations for the events unfurling around them. Not one of them considered he might willingly be involved. None of us would learn the true level of his involvement—or the depths of his rage, alienation, and despair—until many months later. Even then, many of us would struggle to reconcile the person we knew and loved with what he’d done that day.
We stayed out there in the driveway, suspended in limbo, the passing hours marked only by our helpless confusion as we careened from hope to dread. The phone rang and rang and rang. Then the glass storm door of our house once again swung open, and this time I could hear the television Tom had left on in our bedroom, echoing inside the empty rooms. A local news anchor was reporting from outside Columbine High School. I heard him say the latest reports had twenty-five people dead.
Like mothers all over Littleton, I had been praying for my son’s safety. But when I heard the newscaster pronounce twenty-five people dead, my prayers changed. If Dylan was involved in hurting or killing other people, he had to be stopped. As a mother, this was the most difficult prayer I had ever spoken in the silence of my thoughts, but in that instant I knew the greatest mercy I could pray for was not my son’s safety, but for his death.
CHAPTER 2
Slivers of Glass
As the afternoon turned to twilight and then to darkness, I let go of my last hope that Dylan would zoom up the drive in the dented old black BMW he’d fixed up with his dad, laughing and wondering about dinner.
Late in the day, I cornered a member of the SWAT team and asked him a question, point-blank:
“Is my son dead?”
“Yes,” he told me. As soon as he said it, I realized I had already known it to be true.
“How did he die?” I asked him. It seemed important to know. Had Dylan been killed by the police or by one of the shooters? Had he taken his own life? I hoped he had. At least if Dylan died by suicide, I’d know he had wanted to die. Later, I would come to regret that wish almost as bitterly as I’ve ever regretted anything.
The SWAT team member shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. And then he turned away, leaving me alone.
• • •
It will perhaps seem callous that my focus was so squarely on Dylan—on the question of his safety, and later on the fact of his death. But my obligation is to offer the truth to the degree to which my memory will allow, even when that truth reflects badly on me. And the truth is that my thoughts were with my son.
Over the course of the afternoon, I had come to understand Dylan was suspected of shooting people, but this fact registered with me only in an abstract way at first. I was convinced Dylan could not have been responsible for taking anyone’s life. I was beginning to accept he had been physically present during the shootings, but Dylan had never hurt anyone or anything in his life, and I knew in my heart he could not have killed anyone. I was wrong, of course—about that and many things. At the time, though, I was sure.
So, in those first hours and even days, I wasn’t thinking about the victims or about the anguish of their loved ones and friends. Just as our bodies experience shock when we experience extreme trauma—we’ve all heard stories of soldiers in combat who run for miles unaware of a severed limb—a similar phenomenon occurs with severe psychological trauma. A mechanism to preserve our sanity kicks in and lets in only what we can bear, a little at a time. It is a defense mechanism, breathtaking in its power both to shield and to distort.
Whatever mercy there was in not knowing was short-lived. My anguish over the lives lost or destroyed by my son’s hand, and for the pain and suffering this caused their families and friends, is with me every single day. It will never go away, as long as I live. I will never see a mother in the cereal aisle with her little girl without wondering if that beautiful child will reach adulthood. I will never see a cluster of teenagers laughing and bumping each other at Starbucks without wondering if one of them will be robbed of life before he’s had the chance to live it in full. I will never see a family enjoying a picnic or a baseball game or walking into church without thinking of the relatives of those my son murdered.
In writing this book, I hope to honor the memories of the people my son killed. The best way I know to do that is to be truthful, to the best of my ability. And so, this is the truth: my tears for the victims did eventually come, and they still do. But they did not come that day.
• • •
We were still standing in the gravel driveway when the bomb squad arrived. Shortly after, it began to drizzle, and I sought shelter on our doorstep with Tom, Byron, our tenant Alison, and Judy Brown. We clustered tightly together under the narrow ledge over our front door. It grew dark and cold suddenly, and the change in weather heightened our sense of vulnerability and our fear of what was to come.
Reflexively, I thought to pray, and then—for the first time in my life—I stopped myself from reaching for that comfort.
While my mother’s parents were Christian, my father had been brought up in a Jewish home, so my siblings and I were raised in both traditions. There are significant differences between the two religions, but both shared a conception of God as a loving, understanding Father. Since childhood, I had taken refuge in that understanding of Him. However, there was no solace for me there in the early evening of April 20, 1999. Instead, I felt a real sense of fear. I was afraid to make eye contact with God.
Every night since the birth of my children, I had asked God to protect and guide them. I truly believed those prayers watched over my sons. As the boys grew, I’d amended my evening prayer to include the safety of others. When Byron was first entering adolescence, I heard a dreadful story on the news: a teenager had stolen a stop sign from an intersection, a lark resulting in a fatal accident. The idea that one of my children would unwittingly cause harm became my worst nightmare. I never worried they’d hurt someone deliberately; I’d never had any cause to worry about such a thing, from either of them. But, especially as I gripped the dashboard while they were first learning to navigate the narrow, winding canyon roads between our house and town, I hoped no expression of pure teenaged stupidity or carelessness would ever result in injury to someone else. Now those prayers had resolved themselves into a reality so horrific, I lacked the moral imagination to fully grasp it.
I hadn’t lost my faith. I was afraid to attract God’s attention, to further draw down His wrath.
I had always imagined God’s plan for me was aligned with m
y own plan. I believed with all of my heart that if I was a caring and loving and generous person—if I worked hard and gave what I could to charity, if I did my best to be a good daughter and friend and wife and mother—then I would be rewarded with a good life. Exiled to our front steps, the light from the hallway casting harsh shadows on our faces, I felt suddenly ashamed, as my lifelong understanding of God was starkly revealed as a naive fiction, a bedtime story, a pathetic delusion. It was the loneliest I have ever felt.
Soon, there was no time to think or to feel. The police would not let us back into our house; we would have to find another place to stay. Tom, Alison, and I would each be allowed to go inside for five minutes to collect a few personal belongings. We would have to go in one at a time, and under the close watch of two guards.
Before the burst of activity to follow, I had a short, vivid vision that I was standing with a multitude of spirits, all of whom suffered. They were all ages, sizes, and races; I couldn’t tell who was male and who was female. Their heads were bowed and covered with tattered white robes. My old life had come to an end, and a new one had begun: a life in which joy, once so abundant, would be simply a memory. Sorrow, I understood with a painful clarity, would transport me through the rest of this life. The vision ended when needles of rain began to fall on my face, like slivers of glass.
The two police officers escorting me into the house stayed on me like basketball guards, watching my hands closely and keeping their own hands near to mine as I packed. This confused and frightened me, and I felt embarrassed as I rifled through drawers to find underthings and hygiene products. Years afterward, I spoke to one of the officers who’d been at our home. When I described how nervous I’d been, he explained the close attention had been for my own protection: they’d been watching to make sure I didn’t try to kill myself. I was strangely touched by that, later.
I narrated what I was doing as I packed, a breathless monologue to focus my scattered concentration. The need to be systematic and organized returned me to myself. “Something to sleep in. A nightgown. The weather is set to change. Warm coat. You’ll need boots if it snows.” Our cat Rocky was ill, and I fumbled about for his medicines, conscious of how ridiculous it seemed against the backdrop of the tragedy. Worried our two little cockatiels would not survive the cold night in our car, I grabbed our thickest beach towels to wrap around their cage.
I dug through a downstairs closet for the old nylon duffel bags we used for luggage, but couldn’t find two of the bags. Months later, I would learn Dylan used them to carry explosives into the school cafeteria.
With the two officers flanking me, I stood at my closet door. The realization I would have to select clothing to wear to Dylan’s funeral hit me like a punch in the gut; I was still hoping to be rescued from the truth. After a few deep breaths, I hung a brown tweed skirt, a white blouse, and a dark wool blazer on a single hanger.
• • •
Tom and I packed the car in a frenzy.
We had to go, but where? How could we bring this to someone else’s door? The road around our property was thick with media trucks and disaster tourists peering out of their cars. Once we passed the police barricade surrounding our house, we’d be at their mercy. To whose home could we bring a swarm of reporters and curiosity seekers—an inconvenient invasion of privacy at best, and the threat of outright danger at worst? We would arrive, not knowing when we would leave, and with a menagerie of sick and messy animals in tow. We needed help, but from whom?
Judy offered to host us at her house. Grateful to have an option, we agreed, and she left to get ready for us.
Byron wanted to pick up a change of clothes at his own apartment, but the idea terrified me. Could he think clearly enough to drive safely? Reporters and photographers surrounded our property, their cameras and sound equipment aimed toward our house from every vantage point. Would a similar reception greet Byron at his apartment? In truth, I simply didn’t want to let him out of my sight. I relented only after Byron reminded me his lease was in his roommate’s name: he’d likely be able to pick up a few things without attracting attention. He assured me he’d meet up with us later.
As we finished loading the car, some of our neighbors showed up carrying a roast beef wrapped in towels, a gift from yet another neighbor—probably her own family’s dinner. I’d been crying all day, but that act of spontaneous generosity set off a fresh jag. In just a few hours, we’d shed our old identities as valued members of a vibrant community to take on a new one: we were the parents of a perpetrator now, the agent of that community’s destruction. It felt significant, as I clutched the warm glass dish in my arms, that people would still be kind to us.
It was time to go. Some of our neighbors masterminded our escape: one opened the gate at the foot of the drive while another took his own car down to the bottom of the drive and skidded into the middle of the road, blocking anyone who might follow us. The rest of us raced after him in three separate cars—Byron in one, Alison in the next, with Tom and me in the last. As we careened out of the gate at top speed and flew down the dark, twisting road, I was thrumming with fear—of an accident, of exposure, of what would come next.
When Tom and I finally slowed down, we found ourselves alone for the first time since noon, driving aimlessly through the suburbs before our 8:30 meeting with our new attorney. I don’t know how or when Tom contacted him in the chaos, but they’d arranged a meeting in the parking lot of a convenience store near our house. This plan was so cloak-and-dagger that under any other circumstances I would have laughed. Once again, I thought: We are the last people in the world. There was no solace to be found in an old identity, though. Whatever was happening, it was happening to us—and it was happening because of whatever Dylan had done.
We still had little actual information about what had gone on in the school. We knew for sure only that Dylan had been seen inside with Eric during a shooting incident that left many killed and wounded, and investigators believed he’d been involved. I knew my son had died that day, but I did not know yet exactly what he had done.
As we slowly wound our way through the darkened suburb, Tom and I realized we were both having second thoughts about our plan for the night. We were worried Judy’s close connection to the community would mean we might be too exposed if we stayed with her. I was also afraid we’d put her family at risk. We needed a place to collapse and grieve. Mostly, we needed somewhere safe—a place to hide.
As parents and business partners and spouses, Tom and I were good at coordinating complicated logistics with each other, and we relied on those skills as we tried to figure out how to handle what the next few hours would bring, let alone the next few days. We had not yet begun the emotional work of grieving for Dylan, or of struggling to understand what led him to wreak such terrible destruction—a journey we would not weather together as smoothly.
That night, our sole focus was on the most basic of human needs: shelter. Hotels and motels were out of the question as the media flocked to Denver. We couldn’t give our distinctive last name at the front desk, or register with a credit card. We couldn’t leave town. Even if the police would allow such a thing, what would happen to Dylan?
A possibility entered my mind. Too absorbed in our own crisis, we’d barely considered what our friends and family members must have been going through as they watched the tragedy evolve, but Tom’s half sister Ruth and her husband, Don, lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood about twenty-five minutes away from the epicenter of the tragedy, and they did not share our last name. If they were willing to have us, their home would be a good place to be.
We didn’t see Don and Ruth often, although they had always been there for us. When we’d first moved to the Denver area, they’d been invaluable in helping me to get settled. After Dylan was born, Ruth was one of my only visitors at the hospital, as I hardly knew anyone else in town.
They were good people. When my children were small, we’d endured a long season of illness, passing chicken po
x and a bad flu around the family for several weeks. On my birthday, I was too ill even to answer the doorbell when it rang; I dragged myself downstairs in time to see Ruth’s car pulling away down the drive—and at my feet, an entire home-cooked dinner, complete with a chocolate birthday cake and candles.
I was appalled we hadn’t thought of them sooner, and could only attribute the oversight to my impaired level of thinking. I pressed the number into Tom’s cell phone while he cruised the silent streets. The houses we passed looked inviting and cozy with their lit windows, and I could imagine kids getting help with their homework after the soup kettle had been cleared from the table, and all the other ordinary weekday activities that should have been taking place inside. That night, though, I knew that every family in the area would be tuned in to breaking coverage of the horror at Columbine High School. In some of those houses, as in our own, nothing would ever be normal again.
When Ruth answered the phone, I was relieved to hear the welcome in her voice, and I nearly wept with gratitude when she said we could stay with them. I called Judy to thank her for her offer, and Tom called Byron at his apartment to let him know the new plan. Years later, Byron told me he’d mistaken his father’s voice for his brother’s. For one joyful moment, he thought Dylan was calling to tell him he was fine, and that the entire day had been a huge misunderstanding. It was not the first time, or the last, that one of us would engage in the kind of magical thinking that allowed us to hope we could erase the events of the day.
Before we could take shelter at Don and Ruth’s, we had to meet with our lawyer. At 8:30 p.m., we pulled into the convenience store parking lot and waited only a moment in the light rain before a car drew into the space next to ours. Gary Lozow looked over his shoulder to make sure nobody was watching, then approached the driver’s side of our car. I reached over Tom and put my hand out the window to introduce myself, grasping Gary’s wet hand in my own.
Mother's Reckoning : Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (9781101902769) Page 4