Posted on 10/10/2009 4:18:47 PM PDT by real saxophonist
Dylan Klebold's mom speaks in "O" magazine
"No inkling" of plans for Columbine massacre
By The Denver Post
Posted: 10/10/2009
Susan Klebold wrote an essay in the November issue of O magazine. (Denver Post file photo )An essay by the mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold says she had "no inkling" of her son's inner turmoil, and her examination of his journals has prompted her to learn about suicide in an effort to understand the school shooting.
The essay by Susan Klebold, which appears in the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, explores her son's role in the 1999 massacre where he and co-conspirator Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher and left two dozen wounded before killing themselves.
Neither family has spoken at length in the aftermath of what at the time marked the most deadly school shooting in U.S. history. Pending litigation contributed to the silence for several years, but even with the lawsuits resolved, repeated requests for interviews have been turned down.
In a news release, Oprah Winfrey also noted that Susan Klebold had declined interview requests but then, several months ago, agreed to write about her personal experience. The magazine released a few advance excerpts.
"From the writings Dylan left behind, criminal psychologists have concluded that he was depressed and suicidal," Susan Klebold wrote in one passage. "When I first saw copied pages of these writings, they broke my heart. I'd had no inkling of the battle Dylan was waging in his mind."
She added: "Dylan's participation in the massacre was impossible for me to accept until I began to connect it to his own death. Once I saw his journals, it was clear to me that Dylan entered the school with the intention of dying there. And so in order to understand what he might have been thinking, I started to learn all I could about suicide."
Susan Klebold received no payment for the essay, said a magazine spokesperson, but hoped to "raise suicide awareness and to generate support for organizations such as The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the American Association of Suicidology."
A spokesperson for the Klebolds' attorney, Gary Lozow, would not field questions and said that the Klebold family would have no further comment.
The magazine hits newsstands on Tuesday.
In another passage, Susan Klebold recounted the early morning before the violence began:
"Early on April 20, I was getting dressed for work when I heard Dylan bound down the stairs and open the front door. Wondering why he was in such a hurry when he could have slept another 20 minutes, I poked my head out of the bedroom. 'Dyl?' All he said was 'Bye.' The front door slammed, and his car sped down the driveway. His voice had sounded sharp. I figured he was mad because he'd had to get up early to give someone a lift to class. I had no idea that I had just heard his voice for the last time."
Another excerpt describes her struggle to come to grips with the tragedy.
"For the rest of my life, I will be haunted by the horror and anguish Dylan caused," she wrote. "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 myself, about God, about family, and about love."
The woman was in shock. When you are in that kind of deep shock you just go through the motions. I went to the polls and voted for Reagan before going to my 18 year old son’s funeral. Did it mean that I cared more for Reagan or for politics than I did my son? No, I was just in shock and it was election day.
Still boggles my mind how anyone even pretending to be in their right minds . . .
would even obliquely defend being NON EMOTIONALLY BONDED WITH THEIR KIDS!
Amazing. I guess if they haven’t been able to pull it off, the best they can do is justify their lack of skills and lack of bothering.
Naw.
I just think and type fast.
INDEED.
AND, often enough, going thru the motions can help one manage and eventually deal overcomingly with the traumas.
I am usually very tough on parents of thugs and sadists, but I think there were actual satanic forces involved in the Columbine murders. Again, I urge everyone to read the book — it is superbly written — before judging the Klebolds. (Incidentally, Eric Harris’s parents were much less willing to work with the police than the Klebolds were.)
Neither clearly or well.
So go chase a UFO boy yer botherin’ me.
I agree about the satanic.
However, those boys had some level of ATTACHMENT DISORDER.
NO DOUBT.
And whatever the parents did right, that they did very wrong.
y’all’s emotionality has been fascinating to play with.
I wonder what all’s behind it.
It’s clearly not healthiness.
Satan has little attraction for kids who feel loved by parents . . . and therefrom feel loved by God.
I think it has many ramifications, for example, the less needed husbands feel the more likely they will leave the family.
They aren't home.
There is such a difference between stay-at-home parents and SOME working out of the home parents. Their kids are scheduled but the parents are not in the kids' lives. On weekends and holidays, they are at a loss for what to DO with their kids. In stay-at-home and especially homeschooling families, we just operate as a group all the time and don't get desperate when the kids are around. These are our loved ones and we are a part of each other's lives. It's second nature. Hard to describe.
If G-d Forbid one of my sons died of ANY cause I would not give a flying HOOT for my hair.
If that son had killed many children AND himself, I would give LESS of a flying HOOT for my hair than if he had died of another cause. Funeral or no funeral. That is just sick.
INDEED.
And all the rationalizing and pontificating in the world will NOT make-up for FAMILY CLOSENESS, UNITY, BONDEDNESS, LOVE.
And, I think that folks who’ve never had it—too many—have no clue what it’s about; what it costs and what it’s worth.
I’m a scrappy enough bloke but it’s always interesting on these threads how much I can count on being attacked for saying that parents aren’t doing their job when the kids are not ATTACHED, EMOTIONALLY BONDED the first 8 years.
Yes and no.
For some folks, probably those living more shallow lives . . . they know nothing else. Going through the motions is all they’ve done. No one ever taught them any better. Likely their parents didn’t know any better. And they never paused long enough to say—tweet everyone out of the pool. This isn’t working and I’m not going on until I find something that convincingly works a LOT better.
They just keep going through the motions.
don’t read that mag rag and wouldn’t read the interview either.
don’t read that mag or any others like it and wouldn’t read the interview either.
In truth, you have no idea what you would do or how you would behave until it happens to you. You think you know but you can’t know until that day.
There are thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of moms in the US like this. She is trying to cope. She will be tormented for the rest of her days. Sad beyond words.
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