A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold

Author:Sue Klebold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2017-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

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.

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