A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(12)

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 my 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.