‘A Mother’s Reckoning,’ by Sue Klebold

[geminibear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/books/review/a-mothers-reckoning-by-sue-klebold.html?_r=0

 

Sue Klebold is the mother of one of the Columbine High School shooters.

 

I personally always wondered about the shooters. What caused them to do something so heinous? What happened to them? What was their home life? Who did they talk with?

 

Thoughts?

[bigvalboy]

Interesting article. Two things struck me. First was this passage:

"Dylan, who had plenty of friends — who went to the prom just days before the attack, who still laughed over old movies with his parents — had nonetheless fallen off an emotional cliff; his parents never even saw the ledge."

I can understand the despair. Some sadly go over the ledge and never come back. Others return, but are never quite the same again. It is, for lack of a better word, a very dark place to be.

 

And this:

 

The crime of which Klebold convicts herself is ignorance, and for that, she feels bottomless guilt. She recalls being dumbfounded when someone asked her if she could ever forgive her son. “ ‘Forgive Dylan?’ I said. ‘My work is to forgive myself.’ . . . I was the one who let him down, not the other way around.”

 

I can't even fathom the pain of this parent. There are so many endless tragedies to stories like this. Columbine was in many respects the first in what seems like a never ending series of horrific shootings.

[+ purplekow]

Sisyphus and the rock. It sounds as though she has been asking herself what she could have done better only to discover that there is no answer to be had only to have to answer the question again and again. Such a life is not to be wished on anyone. Peace must be elusive for this woman and for the families of the people her son killed, a series of questions which ultimately start and end with Why my loved one?.