A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(99)
The real beauty of these measures is not that they catch potential school shooters, but how effectively they help schools to identify teens struggling with all different kinds of issues: bullying, eating disorders, cutting, undiagnosed learning disorders, addiction, abuse at home, and partner violence—just to name a few. In rare cases, a team may discover that the student has made a concrete plan to hurt himself or others, at which point law enforcement may become involved. In the overwhelming majority of these cases, though, simply getting a kid help is enough.
“People who are involved in targeted violence are usually involved because of an underlying issue,” Dr. Randazzo told me. “Often, that is a mental health issue. Usually, those mental health issues can be resolved if they are discovered and treated effectively. Better mental health resources can without question help to prevent violence.”
If we are serious about preventing violence, we must also recognize the cost to society when we make firearms so easily accessible. Dylan did not do what he did because he was able to purchase guns, but there is tremendous danger in having these highly lethal tools readily available when someone is at their most vulnerable. These risks are demonstrated, and we must insert them into the equation when we are talking about how we can make our communities healthier and safer.
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When tragedies like Columbine or Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook happen, the first question everyone asks is always “Why?” Perhaps this is the wrong question. I have come to believe the better question is “How?”
Trying to explain why something happens is how we can end up latching on to simple answers without actionable solutions. Only someone already in distress and with a vulnerability to suicide sees death as a logical solution to life’s inevitable setbacks. It’s dangerous to condition ourselves to view suicide as a natural response to disappointment, when it is really the result of illness.
The same thing, I believe, is true about what happened at Columbine. Dylan was vulnerable in many ways—unquestionably emotionally immature, depressed, possibly suffering from a more serious mood or personality disorder. Tom and I failed to recognize these conditions and to curtail the influences—violent entertainment, his friendship with Eric—that exacerbated them.
Asking “how” instead of “why” allows us to frame the descent into self-destructive behavior as the process that it is. How does someone progress along a path toward hurting oneself or others? How does the brain obscure access to its own tools of self-governance, self-preservation, and conscience? How can distorted thinking be identified and corrected earlier? How do we know the most effective treatments at various places along the continuum, and make sure they’re available in any medical setting?
How long can we fail to recognize that brain health is health, and identify what can be done to maintain it?
These are the issues that urgently need our attention. Asking “why” only makes us feel hopeless. Asking “how” points the way forward, and shows us what we must do.
As I learned all too well, brain health isn’t an “us versus them” situation. Every one of us has the capacity to suffer in this way, and most of us—at some time in our lives—will. We teach our kids the importance of good dental care, proper nutrition, and financial responsibility. How many of us teach our children to monitor their own brain health, or know how to do it ourselves?
I did not know, and the greatest regret of my life is that I did not teach Dylan.
CONCLUSION
Knowable Folds
Sue Klebold. Colorado Chapter. Loss and Bereavement Council. Lost my son Dylan in a murder-suicide at Columbine High School in 1999. Still asking why. I support research.
—The tweet-length description I wrote to introduce myself at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Chapter Leadership Conference, 2015
A day does not pass that I do not feel a sense of overwhelming guilt—both for the myriad ways I failed Dylan and for the destruction he left in his wake.
Sixteen years later, I think every day about the people Dylan and Eric killed. I think about the last moments of their lives—about their terror, their pain. I think about the people who loved them: the parents of all the children, of course, but also Dave Sanders’s wife, children, and grandchildren. I think about their siblings and cousins and classmates. I think of those who were injured, many left with permanent disabilities. I think about all the people whose lives touched those of the Columbine victims—the elementary school teachers and babysitters and neighbors for whom the world became a more frightening and incomprehensible place because of what Dylan did.
The loss of the people Dylan killed, ultimately, is unquantifiable. I think about the families they would have had, the Little League teams they would have coached, the music they would have made.
I wish I had known what Dylan was planning. I wish that I had stopped him. I wish I’d had the opportunity to trade my own life for those that were lost. But a thousand passionate wishes aside, I know I can’t go back. I do try to conduct my life so it will honor those whose lives were shattered or taken by my son. The work I do is in their memory. I work, too, to hold on to the love I still have for Dylan, who will always remain my child despite the horrors he perpetrated.
I think often of watching Dylan do origami. Whereas most paper folders are meticulous about lining up the edges, fourth-grade Dylan tended to be more slapdash, and his figures were sometimes sloppy. But he’d only have to see a complicated pattern once to be able to duplicate it.