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.
I loved to make a cup of tea and sit quietly beside him, watching his hands moving as quickly as hummingbirds, delighted to see Dylan turn a square of paper into a frog or a bear or a lobster. I’d always marvel at how something as straightforward as a piece of paper can be completely transformed with only a few creases, to become suddenly replete with new significance. Then I’d marvel at the finished form, the complex folds hidden and unknowable to me.
In many ways, that experience mirrored the one I would have after Columbine. I would have to turn what I thought I knew about myself, my son, and my family inside out and around, watching as a boy became a monster, and then a boy again.
Origami is not magic. Even the most complex pattern is knowable, something that can be mapped and understood. So it is, too, with brain illness and violence, and this mapping is the work we must now do. Depression and other types of brain disorders do not strip someone of a moral compass, and yet these are potentially life-threatening diseases that can impair judgment and distort a person’s sense of reality. We must turn our attention to researching and raising awareness about these diseases—and to dispelling the myths that prevent us from helping those who most need it. We must do so, not only for the sake of the afflicted, but also for the innocents who will continue to register as their casualties if we do not.
One thing is certain: when we can do a better job of helping people before their lives are in crisis, the world will become safer for all of us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would not have been able to complete this book without Laura Tucker. Hundreds of pages of writing and thousands of hours of heartache might have died with me had Laura not transformed them into a publishable manuscript. During the years we have worked together, Laura has been much more to me than a writer. She has been midwife, therapist, surgeon, researcher, architect, navigator, workforce, spirit guide, and friend. She was both mortar and mason, completely responsible for turning a pile of broken bricks into a solid structure. Until we teamed up, I was mired in problems that seemed unsolvable. How could I tell a story effectively when readers already knew the ending? How could I explain real-time experience when critical information about facts was learned later? How could I craft my voice when I started out as one person and ended up as someone else? Laura solved these and countless other problems. She has an uncanny ability to weave disparate incidents into threads of logic. She knew how to mine for detail and when to abandon it. I was continuously stunned by her sensitivity to nuance and her ability to hear what lay in the silence between words. Having the opportunity to work with Laura has enriched my life. I will always be grateful that she had the fortitude to undertake a book with such painful subject matter and “walk the walk” with me—even when it was difficult for both of us. I am, and will always be, in awe of her skills and deeply indebted to her.