This post will not be pithy, it will not be cute.  This subject is a huge part of who I am and by talking about it I know I’m opening up a part of myself to the world – and that is very risky – but I promised I would be honest and that’s what I’m gonna do. 

I was paging through  “O Magazine” before bed about three weeks ago and came across an article that I was not expecting.  My stomach jumped into my throat and my pulse grew quick and loud.  I turned the page before I could read the type and put the magazine down, fearful of the nightmares I would inevitably have if I read anything on the page.  

Over two weeks passed before I could open the magazine again and read the story: Susan Klebold’s viewpoint of what happened on April 20, 1999 – the day her son Dylan and his friend Eric opened fire on my high school. 

What I saw and heard that day is too painful and would take too long to write about in this blog format; what is important in the context of this post is that I have only hated two people in all of my 28 years on this Earth: Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.  Reading the article written by Dylan’s mother was risky on my part and I’m kinda surprised I actually did; everything I have read in the past has given me horrible flashbacks and nightmares.  But I soon found out that Mrs. Klebold’s words would change my life. 

She titled the article “I will never know why…”  and beneath her byline was a photo of her gazing at her son, five year old Dylan, as he played with his birthday gifts.  I knew at that point that I needed to read what she had to say.  She wrote about her baby, the boy she knew, and how he was smart and funny and curious.  I could imagine her tears hitting the keyboard as she described the phone call from her husband on the day of the shooting.  I know how my mom felt, I’m sure Susan felt the same immobilizing fear that her child had been injured…or killed.  She described her shock when she found out he was not a victim but the shooter and her inability to believe that it could be her son, the same boy that shared his presents with her on his fifth birthday, that brought so much pain and death to Columbine that day.  

After years of pain and flashbacks and hatred and confusion and immeasurable sadness, I saw Dylan Klebold through his mother’s eyes.  And I stopped hating him.  If I had read the article three years ago it would not have changed my mind.  But now…now that I gaze at my sweet girl with the same love in my eyes as Susan has in that cover photo, now I see Dylan as a person, not a monster.  I still don’t understand why he did it.  I do NOT forgive him.  The pain has not diminished. But seeing Dylan’s struggle through life through his mother’s eyes made me step back and wonder what I would do.  How could a mother EVER suspect that her child could do such a thing?  How could she have ever known that his need for solitude and his moodiness was anything more than that of an awkward teenager grasping to find his place in the world?  

He was depressed, she said.  Now she knows he was suicidal.  The second half of the article details the dangers of teenage depression and the sources available to parents and teens in need.  I believe that she is passionate about helping other people recognize the signs that she didn’t see…but I also think that she could not write anymore about the tragedy of that day.  There were so many deaths, so much loss.  But she lost her baby too.  She lost her little boy.  

Her words opened a door in my heart that has been closed, bolted and sealed for over ten years now.  I just needed a mother’s eyes, a mother’s pain, to show me that humanity can be found in the depravity of my memories of that day.  

I just needed to be a mother to understand that your baby is always your baby.  No matter what.  And he was her baby.