It's hard to believe that it's been seventeen years since the Columbine massacre. When these tragedies happen, I always feel most pain for the mothers of the victims, but I rarely think about the mothers of the perpetrators.
Sue Clebold, mother of Dylan Clebold (one of the Columbine shooters) has published a memoir about her experience as "the mother of a monster." She was featured in a 20/20 interview with Diane Sawyer (ABC) as well as yesterday's "Fresh Air" on NPR. She's an articulate white-haired woman of 66 now, and in the last two years she and her husband have divorced. She talks about spending the last seventeen years grieving the death of her son and his victims and admitting that for many years she "just wanted to die." But then she got breast cancer two years after the tragedy. That brush with her own death made her want to live--and it also made her want to do something constructive. She often spends time at the Columbine Memorial as a way to be close to the teacher and students killed by her son.
While doing a great deal of research on suicide-murders, she's admitted her own guilt in not knowing the extent of Dylan's depression and rage. She describes Dylan as a little boy as brilliant, creative, and sweet--though she wishes she had probed further when, as a teenager, he became distant and depressed. She even wishes that she had violated his privacy and read his journals--which might have led her to get help for him.
Terry Gross asked her, "After the massacre, after the grief, after all you've gone through, do you still love your son?"
"I will always love my son. I never stopped loving my son, not for a moment, and I will love him until I breathe my last breath. I carry him with me, like an invisible child, everywhere I go."
http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/
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