A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(75)
These days, when I page through one of my old diaries and read an entry like “Dylan crabby when reminded to feed the cats,” part of my brain howls: How could you miss that?! Didn’t you know depression often presents as irritability in adolescent boys? I did not, and I am not alone. Somewhere out there in America right now, a suburban mom is pointing with exasperation at two hungry, hopeful cats threading around the ankles of a teenage boy who has forgotten to feed them. Chances are, that boy will grow up without event to lecture his own teenager over a pair of empty cat food bowls.
But for some percentage of families, this will not be the happy outcome. Some unlucky mix of a child’s vulnerabilities and the circumstances that trigger them will combine to set off a much darker cascade.
CHAPTER 14
Pathway to Violence
Dylan’s Senior Year
Robyn pinning a boutonniere on Dylan the afternoon of their senior prom, three days before the shootings.
The Klebold Family
It has always been my feeling that one of the great tragedies of Columbine is the fact that yourselves and the Harrises shared nothing of your own lessons from Columbine. That is, you’ve failed to respond to the questions so many parents in the world have: What signs of hatred and despair did you see? What warning signs did you miss? Were you a family that ever spent much time at the dinner table together? What did your son talk about? What would you have done differently in raising Dylan?…
The most nagging question to me involves what your son hid from you. I’ve heard a number of people say that teens can be very good at hiding items (e.g., bombs and guns) and secrets from their parents. I don’t disagree with that. But this was not just a case of hiding things. Your son was so angry and distressed and hateful and so troubled that he wanted to kill hundreds of his classmates. Hundreds! How in the world could you not have seen that your son was THAT hateful and troubled? How did you become so disconnected that you did not see this disposition of his? How could that happen?!?
I think you could do a great service if you were to speak publicly about those lessons. Sure, it would be very difficult for you to do so. Painful, yes. Might people say you were terrible, neglectful parents? Sure. But obviously many say that already. To me what’s most important is that the pain you might encounter by being open and speaking publicly could not possibly be worse than the pain you’ve already experienced in losing your son in such a tragic way, not to mention the guilt associated with doing nothing as repentance.
—Excerpt from a September 2007 letter from Tom Mauser, the father of Daniel Mauser, one of the boys killed on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School
I know that people want a window into the last days of Dylan’s life, and so I have opened my journals and Dylan’s to build a parallel timeline.
Threat assessment professionals talk about “a pathway to violence.” Dr. Reid Meloy explained: “Targeted violence often begins with a personal loss or humiliation. That incident becomes a decision point, where the person believes that the only way to resolve this grievance is to carry out an act of violence. The first step is researching and planning for the event. The next is preparation: the accumulation of weapons, the selection of a target. The next is the implementation of the attack.”
Eric was on a pathway to violence, probably as early as April of 1997, when the boys first began to make little bombs. He believed that Dylan was on that pathway too, but Dylan’s journals tell a different story. He was pretty sure he was going to be dead long before Eric had the chance to execute his plan. Dylan’s personal pathway was toward suicide, until January of 1999, when suddenly it was not.
It wasn’t that Tom and I didn’t know that something was wrong with Dylan in his senior year. We simply—drastically and lethally—underestimated the depth and severity of his pain and everything he was capable of doing to make it stop.
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Made Dylan spend a few minutes with us when we all sat in the den and ate dinner. It’s so hard to connect with him—he just pushes us away. We’ve got to keep trying to have some kind of relationship. [8/20/98]
Dylan came home from school on his way to work & I fixed him a snack. He felt lousy, thinks he’s getting a cold or worse. He picked out a yearbook picture before going to work. Tom got home late and I made a nice little dinner. Dylan came home and joined us before going out. [8/28/98]
During the summer between Dylan’s junior and senior years, he acted like a typical teenage boy: sometimes funny, playful, and affectionate, other times withdrawn, cranky, and self-involved. I always had the feeling, though, that he was holding something back.
Dylan was still on a short leash at home. We searched his room to make sure he wasn’t hiding drugs or anything stolen. He’d always been good with money, but he was short a lot that summer. Tom nagged him to get a job, but he didn’t want to settle for fast food; he wanted to work with computers. He was making restitution payments to the victim of his crime, and while he picked up a little extra money by doing odd jobs for us and for our neighbors, we made up the difference when he fell behind on his car insurance.
At the Diversion orientation meeting, the parents had been asked not to contact the staff. If you don’t hear from us, they told us, it’s going well. Even though we found out later that he sometimes missed appointments or showed up late, we didn’t hear a thing. When Dylan’s original intake counselor left, a new one called to introduce himself, and that was it. Years later, I read the first counselor’s case notes. She said Dylan was a “nice young man, kind of goofy, and a bizarre sense of humor, he makes me laugh.”