Shaun > Books: read-2016‎ (41)

I know telling these stories here exposes me to further criticism. The thought fills me with fear, although there's no criticism of my parenting I have not already heard over the last sixteen years. I've heard that Tom and I were too lenient with Dylan, and that we were too restrictive. I've been told that our family's position on gun control caused Columbine; perhaps if Dylan had been habituated to guns, they would not have had the same mystique for him. People have asked me if we abused Dylan, if we permitted someone else to abuse him, if we ever hugged him, if we ever told him that he was loved.

Of course I look back skeptically on the decisions we made. Of course I have regrets, in particular about the clues I missed that Dylan was in danger of hurting himself and others. It is precisely because I missed them that I want to tell these stories, because whatever parenting decision Tom and I might have made, they were done thoughtfully and in good conscience, and to the best of our abilities. I tell these stories not to burnish my son's reputation, or our own as parents, But I do think it's important, especially for parents and teachers, to understand what Dylan was like.

Much has been written about the need most people have, in the aftermath of a tragedy like Columbine, to assign blame. Whether it was the scale of the tragedy, or the senselessness, or a thousand other reasons I can think of, Columbine became--and remains--a lightning rod. People blamed video games, movies, music, bullying, access to guns, unarmed teachers, the absence of prayer in schools, secular humanism, psychiatric medication. Mostly, though, they blamed us.

Was he evil? I've spent a lot of time wrestling with that question. In the end, I don't think he was. Most people believe suicide is choice, and violence if a choice; those things are under a person's control. Yet we know from talking to survivors of suicide attempts that their decision-making ability shifts in some way we don't well understand. In our conversation, psychologist and suicide researcher Dr. Matthew Nock at Harvard used a phrase I like very much: dysfunction in decision making. If suicide seems like the only way out of an existence so painful it has become intolerable, is that really an exercise of free will?

Of course, Dylan did not simply die by suicide. He committed murder; he killed people. We've all felt angry enough to fantasize about killing someone..."

I think often of watching Dylan do origami...I loved to make a cup of tea and sit quietly beside him...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. Than 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 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.

This has been the most difficult journey of our lives. Parents aren't supposed to survive their children. A wife isn't supposed to be murdered by her husband. And precious granddaughters aren't supposed to have their childhoods ripped from them. But I have witnessed God's love and grace in the most incredible way during these five years. You see love really does trump evil.