Dylan & his parents
“By Dylan’s senior year, he had grown tall and thin. His hair was long and scraggly; under his baseball cap, it stuck out like a clown wig. He’d been accepted at four colleges and had decided to go to the University of Arizona, but he’d never regained his love of learning. He was quiet. He grew irritated when we critiqued his driving, asked him to help around the house, or suggested that he get a haircut. In the last few months of senior year, he was pensive, as if he were thinking about the challenges of growing older. One day in April I said, “You seem so quiet lately—are you okay?“ He said he was “just tired.” Another time I asked if he wanted to talk about going away to college. I told him that if he didn’t feel ready, he could stay home and go to a community college. He said, “I definitely want to go away.“ If that was a reference to anything more than leaving home for college, it never occurred to me. ………
Seeing pictures of the devastation and the weeping survivors was more than I could bear. I avoided all news coverage in order to function. I was obsessed with thoughts of the innocent children and the teacher who suffered because of Dylan’s cruelty. I grieved for the other families, even though we had never met. Some had lost loved ones, while others were coping with severe, debilitating injuries and psychological trauma. It was impossible to believe that someone I had raised could cause so much suffering. The discovery that it could have been worse—that if their plan had worked, Dylan and Eric would have blown up the whole school—only increased the agony. ….
For the rest of my life, I will be haunted by the horror and anguish Dylan caused. I cannot look at a child in a grocery store or on the street without thinking about how my son’s schoolmates spent the last moments of their lives. Dylan changed everything I believed about my self, about God, about family, and about love. I think I believed that if I loved someone as deeply as I loved him, I would know if he were in trouble. My maternal instincts would keep him safe. But I didn’t know. And my instincts weren’t enough. And the fact that I never saw tragedy coming is still almost inconceivable to me. I only hope my story can help those who can still be helped. I hope that, by reading of my experience, someone will see what I missed.”
—-Sue Klebold (excerpts from “I Will Never Know Why" O Magazine Nov. 2009)
“He was hopeless. We didn’t realize it until after the end.“—-Tom Klebold from http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/15/opinion/columbine-parents-of-a-killer.html
The Everlasting Contrast 