The next thirty minutes were wasted. I cried in the bathroom for half of it, and walked around in a daze for the rest. My need to talk to another mother who had lost a child to suicide was even greater than I had known. When Celia reached out, I grabbed hold of what she was offering like I was grabbing for a rope, mid-fall.
We spent almost an hour in two plush chairs in the hotel lobby, holding hands and sharing. I was careful not to divulge specifics about Dylan that might put Celia in legal jeopardy. Meanwhile, her own story broke my heart. She’d lost her son so young! At least I had been able to see Dylan as a young man.
I knew I wasn’t the only mother who’d had absolutely no idea how troubled her beloved child had been, but I’d had few opportunities to feel the kinship that comes from talking to someone who has also lost someone to suicide. It helped that Celia was so pretty and well put-together, so intelligent and articulate—the kind of woman I would have admired under any circumstances. Her sophisticated normality was a balm, as I had unwittingly bought into many of the ignorant myths about suicide.
As we tearfully hugged good-bye, I felt closer to her than I felt to anyone in the world. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” people would say, shaking their heads—and they were right. I say that without judgment. Who could imagine going through something like this? I certainly could not have. Surrounded as I was by love and support, I felt completely adrift from normal experience—and indeed, from myself. It was, I came to realize, how Dylan must have felt at the end of his life.
There had been no relief for me on the horizon, no indication it would ever feel any different, until Celia put her hand on mine. With one gesture, she had connected me to a society of survivors who would welcome me without hatred or judgment. For the first time, I felt a gleam of hope that I might not have to spend the rest of my life spinning on my own solitary planet, grappling with feelings no one else could understand.
Somewhere out there, there was a tribe of people who would see me as a sister, a partner, a soul mate—who would allow me to join them in making a contribution.
• • •
In the second year after Dylan’s death, I finally found that community.
It had been painful to feel so profoundly alienated from the place where we had made our home. I had always chatted easily with the barista at Starbucks, and I knew the names of all the women at the supermarket checkout. After Columbine, I anxiously watched people’s body language and facial micro-expressions to see whether they recognized me. Luckily, 99.9 percent of the people who did had something kind to say, but cringing like a frightened animal in the place where we’d made our home had shaken my sense of myself.
Much has been written about what happened in Littleton in the wake of the tragedy. As humans go into shock after an assault on their bodies, so do communities. As President Clinton said on the night of the massacre, “If it could happen in a place like Littleton…” This wasn’t the drug-riddled inner city, or some supposedly godless corridor like New York or Los Angeles. People who lived in Littleton were upstanding citizens with nice suburban houses and happy, healthy, well-fed children. We expected our schools to be safe.
In the months after Columbine, everyone who lived in the area felt exposed and frightened. The whole place was a bundle of raw nerves, and people responded in all kinds of ways. Some tapped in to a vein of forgiveness and compassion. Others lashed out. Many who’d never had a voice before gained a sense of power and importance. Some were seduced by it; others genuinely felt they could do some good by speaking out.
Blame swirled. Too many guns were the problem, said one faction. There hadn’t been enough guns, said another; every teacher should be armed. A lack of family values was to blame, shouted the Religious Right. Still others claimed that the Religious Right had co-opted the community’s mourning. Amid all this, people were trying to mourn the dead and heal the injured, while scrambling to rebuild a sense of community, a sense of safety, a sense of self.
The natural response to tragedy is to look for meaning: How could this happen? Who is responsible? Tom and I were the chief suspects. “Those boys could only have learned hate like that in their homes,” editorials thundered. The things people wrote and said were painful to us, but we were far from the only ones to find the climate divisive.
Like porcupines, people roll into a ball to protect their soft centers, projecting their spikes outward. This defensive mode is a natural response to being attacked, and there were a lot of spikes in Littleton in those days. The school, the media, the police—everyone involved seemed to be simultaneously fending off an attack while launching one of their own.
The sheriff’s department was doing meticulous work, but the public was learning they had also failed to follow through on Judy and Randy Brown’s repeated warnings about Eric. His website was quoted extensively in the search warrants served on the day of the massacre, proving someone in the department had known about it. One claim had even been pursued: when investigators had found evidence that Eric was building pipe bombs, they drew up a warrant to search the Harris house. But the warrant was never taken before a judge, the house was never searched, and the investigation report did not surface until long after the tragedy.
As the public lost confidence in the sheriff’s department, people began to demand more information. The autopsy report of a minor is usually sealed, but the most important findings—that there had been no drugs in Dylan’s system, for instance—had already been released. I did not see what anyone had to gain from knowing what was in his stomach when he died, or how much his organs weighed. Even with our lawyers’ help, we lost that fight, and the autopsy results were picked over and published. I felt sick. Even in this, we had failed to protect Dylan.
The media swarm had receded somewhat, but there was still a Columbine-related headline on the front page of the local news almost every day. Some reporters were digging into the ongoing investigation, and trying to get a real understanding of the dynamics at the school. Others were less ethical. When Columbine crime scene photos of Eric and Dylan lying dead in pools of blood were sold to the National Enquirer and published, it seemed there was no line that couldn’t be crossed. Later, though, I would learn that many journalists had also been traumatized by the time they spent in Littleton.
Meanwhile, Tom and I were sitting in the eerily silent eye of the storm. Even while our own inner circle continued to be an immense source of strength (and an insulation from the hostility of the outside world), the tension in our own relationship was rising. It would only get worse as the sense of solace and purpose I found in the company of other suicide loss survivors grew.
• • •
My friend Sharon was a survivor of suicide loss herself, and knew I needed to connect with other parents who had lost children to suicide. She also knew that my organizational skills make me a natural coordinator and administrator, the type of person you automatically ask to plan a meeting, or balance a budget, or type up minutes. So, in that second year after Columbine, Sharon put me to work. She invited me to join a small group of women who volunteered for the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado.
Walking into the first meeting, I was scared sick. Would these people judge me? I didn’t dare to hope they’d understand what Dylan had done, let alone what I had experienced. Ten minutes later, I was sitting around a kitchen table with five other mothers of children lost to suicide, tying raffia bows onto flowerpots containing forget-me-not seed packets. There was no discrimination in that room—nothing but love, and compassion, and an all-too-recognizable grief. (Three of the six women at the table—half—would also survive breast cancer, which strengthened my admittedly unscientific theory about what happens when a bomb goes off in your heart.) The tension I usually felt in the company of others melted away. The opportunity to grieve for Dylan as my son, no matter what he had done in the final moments of his life, was valuable beyond description.
I recently read an article in the New York Times by
a therapist, Patrick O’Malley. He describes the respite one of his patients found at a support group for bereaved parents, despite her initial resistance. The group was “a place where no acting was required. It was a place where people understood that they didn’t really want to achieve closure after all. To do so would be to lose a piece of a sacred bond.” When I was with other survivors, Dylan was a boy who had died by suicide. Nobody was excusing what he had done, but they weren’t discounting my grief, either, or my right to miss the son I had lost.
The next weekend, I attended a luncheon hosted by the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado, the group Sharon chaired; our forget-me-nots were on the tables. For the first time, I was in a room filled with people who could relate to all my feelings, the ones that made me feel like I was hanging on to sanity by the merest thread.
I didn’t need to tell the people in that room that I hadn’t known what Dylan was thinking or planning. That place was all too familiar to them. “Bottom line: when someone lies to you, you feel like a fool,” a woman said, and I startled myself with a ragged sob. (One thing about a suicide loss survivors’ event? You’re never the only person crying.) They understood the humiliation I felt at being duped, and the shame of knowing that I had not been able to help my child precisely when he had needed me most.
As I’d done with Celia, I scrutinized everyone I met for some indication of the underlying problem that had brought this nightmare upon them. Did this mother seem cold or checked-out? Did this dad seem abusive, or neglectful? Was there some identifying characteristic that would brand these people—and, by extension, myself—as deficient in some way? This was, of course, the way people scrutinized me.
But the people I met there were nice, smart, funny, kind—normal. Their stories poured out of them. They were elementary school teachers, social workers, truck drivers, dentists, pastors, stay-at-home moms. They had been active, attentive parents, sisters, husbands, wives, and children. They had deeply loved the person they lost. Like me, many of them had misread indicators of something drastically amiss.
Suicide is ugly. It’s wreathed in disgrace. It screams to the world that a person’s life ended in failure. Most people don’t even want to hear about it. As a culture, we believe that people who die by suicide are weak, that they lack willpower, that they’ve taken “the coward’s way out.” We believe that they are selfish, and have acted aggressively. If they cared about their families/spouses/work, they would have found a way to think themselves out of the spiral they were in. None of this is true, and yet the taint is pervasive and shared by the surviving families. Bewilderment, guilt, regret, and self-castigation are constant companions for a survivor of suicide loss.
One afternoon, I had lunch with an old friend—not a suicide loss survivor—who asked me, “Can you ever forgive Dylan for what he did?” I sat silent, dumbstruck, seeing how radically our lives had diverged. All I could think of was the scene in Ordinary People where Buck’s wet hand slips out of Conrad’s, and Buck drowns. I composed my thoughts so I could say what I felt without sounding defensive: “Forgive Dylan? My work is to forgive myself.” Like Buck, Dylan had slipped out of my grip. I was the one who let him down, not the other way around.
If suicide is difficult to think and talk about, then murder-suicide is unthinkable. I hadn’t simply failed to protect Dylan from himself, but everyone he killed, too.
In the years I’ve been involved with the suicide loss survivor community, I have seen that education and prevention can save lives. But participating in that first event—and in dozens of others since—solidified a realization that was simultaneously comforting and terrifying: anyone could be here.
Lots of people there hadn’t known there was a problem, or—like me—had underestimated its gravity. Our first inkling that something was seriously wrong slammed into our lives in one catastrophic, irreversible moment. Even professionals didn’t always know when they were dealing with a life-and-death situation. A psychologist spoke about losing her son. Respected, well-trained, she’d known all the right things to do; still, suicide hadn’t even been on her radar. (We should never conclude from these stories that suicide comes without warning; simply that we don’t always recognize behaviors that may be indicative of risk.)
Others were well aware of danger, but hadn’t known how to help. Another woman’s son had been hospitalized repeatedly for his bipolar disorder. After his doctor-recommended release, he continued to be treated. In fact, he saw both the family’s pastor and his own psychiatrist on the day he shot his girlfriend and killed himself.
These stories made me realize the seriousness of the foe we were up against. By lunchtime at the first event I attended, three things had become starkly clear.
One: There is more to suicide prevention than loving someone and telling them so. As bottomless as my love had been, it had not been enough to save Dylan, or his victims, and here was an auditorium filled with people who could say the same.
Two: Many of us had believed there were no signs of trouble on the horizon when we hadn’t recognized indicators of potential risk. In many cases, we hadn’t even known there was cause to be on heightened alert.
Three: I learned that while there are effective interventions for depression and other risk factors for suicide, we cannot yet rely on their effectiveness. I’m hesitant to write that, out of fear that someone who needs help might be discouraged from seeking it. But many of the people I met that day had tried to help someone struggling with ongoing or intermittent illness. They’d persevered through weeks, months, years, or even decades of therapy, through rounds of meds and alternative treatments and hospitalizations. Some of them were success stories, but some were not. Many lived in fear for someone else, or waged a daily struggle with their own suicidal thoughts.
Whether the problem was finding a bed in a good facility (there is little consensus on whether hospitalization is the best treatment for suicidality at all; some recent studies indicate that it may not be), the inadequacy of staff training on brain illness issues in emergency rooms, or a hospital’s failure to raise an alarm about risk levels post-release, I understood for the first time that there were challenges to securing targeted, appropriate treatment for a person in danger.
That first suicide prevention event was the dawning of a new awareness. The problem we were up against was multifaceted and tremendously complex. If something was going to change, there was a great deal to be done.
• • •
Suicide prevention summit. An emotional ride. Got hugged in elevator by people when I finally said who i was. There was lots of crying. I felt at home.
—Journal entry, May 2002
To most people, it wouldn’t have seemed like much: me sitting at the registration table at a conference held by the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado, greeting people and finding their nametags for them, as Celia had greeted me two years before. The difference was that I was wearing a nametag of my own, with a colored sticker on it identifying me as someone who had lost a child to suicide. As I took my place at the table that morning, my heart hammered in my chest. Would I be caught off guard by someone from the press? Would an attendee realize who I was and spit in my face?
I greeted the conference participants and answered questions about the speakers and gave directions to the restroom, and nobody said anything, except occasionally to offer condolences for my loss.
After that watershed day, I became seriously involved in initiatives to prevent suicide and violence. I manned registration tables and folded programs. I joined thousands of others at community walks to raise money for suicide prevention. I shuttled presenters to restaurants from their hotels, packaged items for silent auctions, picked pamphlets up from the printer. I talked to people, I hugged them, and I listened.
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control show that suicide is among the top ten causes of death in the United States, right up there with pernicious killers like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and kidney disease. But wh
en it comes to funding for research, suicide prevention is at the bottom, perhaps because of the misguided and yet persistent belief that suicide happens by choice rather than illness. Funding for suicide prevention research comes largely from families who channel feelings of sorrow and helplessness into volunteering and fund-raising. Like all nonprofit efforts, suicide prevention organizations are often underfunded and understaffed, and I quickly discovered that someone with my administrative skills could make a difference. For the first time in a long time, I felt I had a contribution to make.
My motives weren’t purely altruistic. Being part of a group, working shoulder to shoulder toward the same goal, was a gift I gave myself. Even if I couldn’t officially attend a support group, I could link arms with other suicide loss survivors to make a good conference better. It was a privilege and a blessing to connect with a cause so deeply. I’d had many jobs and hobbies that I had cared about. I’d taught kids to read as a reading specialist, and I’d worked to provide adult students with disabilities the accommodations they needed to succeed in college. But my work in the suicide prevention community felt like a bona fide calling, a path out of the darkness, a way forward for a life that had careened off the rails.
Over the years of working with people with disabilities, I had observed that profound loss often brought with it a depth of gratitude for life, a sense of joy, and an ability to be in the present that people untouched by tragedy could not always access. I felt that among suicide loss survivors, too. We cried a lot, but we also laughed.
Mother's Reckoning : Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (9781101902769) Page 28