Dylan and Byron weren’t eligible for bus service to Columbine High School, so Tom or I had to drop them off and pick them up. When Dylan began ninth grade, we worked out a plan that honored his growing sense of independence: after school, he would take the city bus a couple of miles to the college where I worked, and stay with me until it was time to go home. I loved having Dylan at my office with me while I worked. I kept a file drawer full of snacks for him, which often went unopened because the women in my department spoiled him with homemade treats. If his homework was done, he’d head to the student lounge to watch television, or to the cafeteria for a milkshake. Occasionally he’d stretch his long legs out under a table in my office to take a nap.
When he was a sophomore, he volunteered at the day care on campus. The director was a colleague of mine, and I’d occasionally stop by to watch him work. True to form, Dylan would be out there on the playground, making sure the little kids were lining up neatly to get a turn on the swing.
Every mother worries about the social aspects of high school, but I was less worried than most. Dylan was tall and geeky, and never part of that top rung of the social hierarchy reserved for athletes, but his social life flourished in high school. He had three close friends with whom he spent most of his free time. On any given weekend, one of them was at our house, or Dylan was at one of theirs. The four of them—Dylan, Zack, Nate, and Eric—had other friends too, but these were the kids we considered Dylan’s inner circle.
Dylan met Nate, the boy I always considered his closest friend, in junior high school. Nate was an only child, raised by his mother and stepfather. Like Dylan, Nate was gangly: tall and thin, with long dark lashes and black hair. Unlike Dylan, though, he was effusive and happy to talk a mile a minute about everything under the sun. In the early years of their friendship, the two of them spent most of their free time outdoors, playing catch and other games. Nate handily outplayed Dylan in basketball, but Dylan beat him soundly when they played pool back at our house. When Nate spent the night, the boys would stay up late playing pool or video games, or trying out recipes from late-night cooking shows. (Dylan was famous, even among the voracious adolescents he hung out with, for his appetite. He was adventurous, too. When his friends came out with us for dinner, they’d usually stick with the fried standards, while Dylan experimented with calamari or barbecued duck.)
Nate spent a lot of time at our house. He was the first one on his feet to help if I came in carrying groceries or laundry, and quick to compliment my cooking. I’m happiest when I have a full house, and never complained when a group of teenagers descended upon my kitchen like locusts, although our house was sufficiently remote that it didn’t happen very often.
Dylan met his friend Zack freshman year. Zack’s dad was a university professor turned administrator, and his mom ran the children’s youth group at the church we’d attended when the boys were younger. Zack was friendly and outgoing, with a stocky build, a round face, and short brown hair. His house was ground zero for all kinds of zany activity—someone always seemed to be barbecuing or going boating or throwing a pool party—and Dylan spent a lot of time there. I was especially pleased by Dylan’s friendship with Zack, because of how gregarious and outgoing Zack was. He didn’t mind being the center of attention, which drew Dylan out a little.
Both Zack and Dylan were interested in technology. One summer, they hit rummage sales in Zack’s neighborhood for old telephone equipment, determined to build a portable telephone system. (This was before cell phones.) The boys were proud of the contraption they came up with—an old telephone bolted to a sprung suitcase—and they got it working well enough to cause some static on the phone system in our house.
It was Zack who got Dylan interested in doing sound tech for theater productions at the end of their sophomore year. After watching a production of Bye Bye Birdie, I visited Dyl in the sound booth and was impressed by his command of the many switches and levers on the complicated board. Dylan loved it. He spent hours at rehearsals, and experimented with manipulating sounds on his computer to make an original soundtrack for a production of Frankenstein directed by his friend Brooks. People occasionally approached him to run the sound system for their talent shows, church events, and less formal after-school productions.
Zack was the first of Dylan’s friends to have a girlfriend. Dylan was jealous of his friend’s good fortune, but nonetheless became friends with Zack’s girlfriend, Devon. After Dylan’s death, Devon made a book of photographs and stories about him for me. What struck me was how much she trusted in and confided in Dylan. When her feelings were hurt or when she had conflicts with others, it was Dylan she turned to for support: “I would call Dylan on the phone or talk to him on the computer. It was the best therapy I could hope for. Dylan was the best listener I had ever met.”
Eric was the fourth member of the crew. Dylan and Eric had also met in junior high school. Eric’s dad had been in the military, and he’d retired to the Denver area; the family was still quite new there when Eric and Dylan met. We met the Harrises when the boys started hanging out, and we liked them, although we didn’t see them socially. At the end of eighth grade, Dylan and Eric were both recognized for their achievement in math. When they walked up to the stage to accept their awards, I whispered to Tom that they looked like two peas in a pod. (This was before Dylan’s growth spurt.)
In junior high, Dylan and Eric watched tons of movies together, and loved to go bowling. One time, they built a contraption to launch potatoes from one side of a pocket park to another. As they grew older, they added to their interests an attraction to girls, computer games, and music, as well as baseball games and concerts. In high school, Eric remained small and relatively slight, while Dylan shot up in height. Eric was older, and got his license before Dylan.
Their friendship didn’t seem any more intense than Dylan’s relationships with other boys; if anything, I would have said that Dylan was closer to Nate. It did seem more private, somehow. I never felt as close to Eric as I did to Nate and Zack, although he was always respectful and perfectly polite when he was around Tom and me. I don’t remember him asking me any questions, or volunteering ridiculous stories about Dylan, the way Zack and Nate did, but he was clearly smart, friendly, and funny.
Perhaps it’s significant I don’t have the same kinds of memories of connecting with Eric that I do with Dylan’s other friends. I wonder how much of that has to do with spending time with Zack and Nate after Dylan’s death, and the fact that I had the privilege of seeing them as they grew into adulthood. I still talk to Nate; he checks in with me at holiday time, and comes to visit when he’s in town. I do know that we did not perceive there to be anything unusual or unsettling about Eric, or about his friendship with Dylan prior to the trouble they had near the end of junior year, or Tom and I would not have permitted it to continue.
Dylan didn’t have a girlfriend in high school, but he and his other friends did hang out with girls; “herd dating” was common among their age group. He met his prom date, Robyn, in class; they studied calculus together. When Dylan first started spending time with Robyn, I peppered him with questions about her and her family, as I did about all of his friends. He laughed: “Believe me, Mom: you have nothing to worry about with Robyn. She’s exactly the kind of person you’d want me to be with, an A student.” When I asked what she was like, Dylan shrugged and told me, “She’s just a nice person.” I met her a few days later, and realized Dylan had been right: Robyn was lovely. I was impressed by how comfortable she seemed around Tom and me.
Before Dylan and his friends could drive, it was easy to interact with them and get to know their parents because the boys needed transportation in order to get together. Tom and I always stopped in to say hi to the other parents and to coordinate plans when we were dropping Dylan off. It made me feel good to know we could speak freely with one another about our children if we had concerns, though we almost never had cause.
When Dylan and his friends were old enough to
work, his closest friends ended up working at Blackjack Pizza. Zack got a job there first; Dylan joined him a little while after, and Eric and Nate after that. Dylan bragged about his ability to make a great pizza quickly. When paychecks started rolling in, I helped him open checking and savings accounts at the bank, and after he died, I found neat folders containing his bank statements, payment stubs, and tax information. Tom or I would drop him off and pick him up from work if he couldn’t get a ride from one of his friends. We both got a kick out of calling to find out what time he needed to be picked up; it was the only time we got to hear Dylan’s professional customer service voice.
Dylan’s high school grades ebbed and flowed with his level of enthusiasm for the subject and the teacher. It disappointed us that he was not fulfilling his academic potential as he had in elementary school. On the other hand, I was relieved to see him lighten up. When he was younger, Dylan’s perfectionism had frustrated him, and sometimes frustrated us—although I could relate. So I didn’t mind when his orderly room turned into the more typical teenage sty. He’d eventually find areas of interest he’d excel in, just as Tom and I had; my own grades had been mediocre until graduate school.
I have since learned that perfectionism is frequently a characteristic of kids with special abilities. Ironically, it can sometimes undermine their potential. A mistake or setback that most kids would shrug off can devastate a child with unrealistic and unattainable standards. It can lower their self-esteem, causing them to disengage from the intellectual challenges that once fired them up. In retrospect, I believe that Dylan’s innate perfectionism, and our inability to help him manage his unrealistic expectations for himself, contributed to his feelings of alienation at the end of his life.
• • •
Dylan planned to major in computer science at college. Like his dad, he loved to tinker, and they did a lot of that together: customizing speakers and fixing up cars. He and Tom also liked to play pranks on one another, like setting each other’s computer to surprise the user with obnoxious sounds when the machine was turned on, such as a dog “singing” a Christmas carol.
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.
Mother's Reckoning : Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (9781101902769) Page 10