A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(54)

The tapes stayed private. Conspiracy theorists raged, but there was no cover-up. There just wasn’t anything worth seeing.

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My relationship with Dylan in my head and heart has changed. I’m so angry with him right now. I wonder what I did as a Mom to make him feel so hurt, so angry, so disconnected.

—Journal entry, October 1999



Leaving the sheriff’s office after seeing the Basement Tapes, I was in a whole-body state of shock. In the parking lot I staggered toward the car, slurring my words like a drunk. The horror of what we had just heard—not to mention that the tragedy could have been so much more severe, and the violence perpetrated so substantially worse—practically brought me to my knees.

In the days and months after that meeting, my entire world broke open all over again. Viewing the Basement Tapes finally forced me to see my son the way the rest of the world saw him. No wonder they thought he was a monster.

There’s a miniature gyroscope in each one of us, searching for equilibrium and maintaining our orientation. For months after seeing the Basement Tapes, no modulation was possible. I could barely tell which way was up.

Once I emerged from a state of shock and started to feel something again, I was consumed with fury. I was reeling from what Dylan had done to so many innocent people, and what he might have done to so many more. I had kept his loving memory alive in my heart all those months, but he had destroyed that memory, and everything else. At Thanksgiving, the only thing I could think of to be thankful for was that the bombs hadn’t gone off. Dylan’s empty chair was a reminder of the other families, mere miles away, with empty chairs of their own. I held Byron’s hand while he graciously gave his thanks for the food and for us, but there was no possibility of further conversation, or of eating more than a perfunctory bite. When Byron excused himself from the table after a miserable fifteen minutes and stood up to carry his dishes into the kitchen, Tom and I both started crying.

My digestive issues worsened that fall. When my annual gynecological checkup rolled around, my doctor was genuinely freaked out by the way I looked and sounded. I’d known him for years; he’d delivered Dylan, in fact, and I’d been pregnant at the same time as his wife, so we’d been in the same new baby care class. As a medical professional and as a friend, he was adamant: I needed to find a therapist.

It was truer than he knew. Because of the legal restrictions, I’d never joined a support group. And while my friends and colleagues had been wonderful in allowing me to share my memories of Dylan and my grief and my questions, how on earth could I talk about what I’d seen on those tapes? The lawsuits made it impossible, first of all. And now that some of my questions had been answered, my shame and anger eclipsed everything else.

Desperate, I made an appointment with the therapist I’d seen in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. I’d always suspected he didn’t have the right training to handle the complications of my situation, and that appointment was the final straw. After I’d told him what we’d seen and heard on the tapes, he could only sit in stunned silence. Finally, he confessed he was in over his head, and didn’t know how to help. He asked if I would be willing to allow him to consult with another counselor. Though I was grateful to him for his honesty and his help, we agreed to part ways.

I asked for recommendations from my doctor, from friends, and from a pastor and a rabbi. Gary Lozow helped me to vet the candidates. It was a dispiriting process. One therapist couldn’t wait to get off the phone when she heard who I was. She didn’t want to become entangled in the many lawsuits swirling around our family. Some displayed a prurient interest in the details of the case, while others confessed they simply weren’t up to the task. We kept at the search, and I found someone who had also lost a child, which made a world of difference. When I looked into her eyes, I felt I’d come home.

In truth, I was only blindingly angry with Dylan for a few days after seeing the tapes. I had to let it go. Anger blocks the feeling of love, and the love kept winning.

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It was my new therapist who helped me to see why that day at the sheriff’s office had devastated me so entirely. I’d had to start the grieving process all over again. The Dylan I had already mourned was gone, replaced by someone I didn’t even recognize.

Like Dorian Gray’s portrait, the picture I had of Dylan in my mind grew uglier every time I looked at it. The buffer I’d clung to all those months—believing he’d been an unwitting or coerced participant, or acting in a moment of madness—was gone. The evil face I’d seen on the tapes was a side of him I did not recognize, a side I’d never seen during his life. After seeing the tapes, it was really hard not to say, That devil—that is who he was.

With my therapist’s help, I would find there was no lasting comfort in casting Dylan as a monster. Deep down, I couldn’t reconcile that characterization with the Dylan I had known. The rest of the world could explain away what he had done: either he was born evil—a bad seed—or he’d been raised without moral guidance. I knew it wasn’t nearly so simple.

After we saw the Basement Tapes, I opened a small box in my desk drawer where I keep a few treasured keepsakes. Among them was a tiny origami horse. I checked and rechecked the box for the little horse, periodically taking it out to examine it as if its folds held the answer to the questions I was asking.

When Dylan was about nine years old, I contracted a nasty eye infection that persisted despite several trips to the doctor. Dylan had been concerned, checking my eyes often to see if they had improved. He was always a physically affectionate child, and I can still summon the sense memory of his hand on my shoulder as he peered anxiously into my eyes. While I was still healing, I discovered a tiny winged horse made of folded paper carefully placed on my desk, along with a note in his childish handwriting. The note said, “I hope my get well Pegasus makes you well. I made him espessially for you. Love, Dylan.”