In this conversation with Sue Klebold, I asked her to:
- Tell me about Dylan
- As you think of the past say what comes to your mind when you think, "If only..."
- As you think of the future and about lessening school shootings, murder/suicides and just plain suicides say what comes to your mind when you think, "What if..."
Continuing from Part 2:
Dr. G: So I guess we've covered some of the "if only's," but now use the "if only" prompt and just go with it and see where it takes us.
Sue: Where it takes me now is, after all these years of exploration and activism, I go back to all kinds of "if only's."
If only I had known how to ask questions differently and listen differently would be right at the top of my list.
If only the school system had been more sensitive to my son's needs and not tried to plug it in to a punishment for behavior that might have been indicative that he needed help.
If only they had a better handle on a toxic school culture.
If only they had had procedures in place when they saw Dylan's violent paper to examine whether or not he was troubled, or whether this was just something that he wrote.
If only when he'd had his doctor's appointment for a sore throat a couple of months before this happened, if only the doctor had done a psychological screening of somehow to say hey, you've got some serious issues going on here besides throat.
If only when he was in diversion... the whole diversion program was different.
If only knowing that a kid who'd never gotten in trouble was suddenly in trouble and what a difficult, humiliating thing that was for him inside...
If only they had been alert to the fact that he was at an elevated suicide risk and known how to advise me how to handle that, and how to help him.
I don't know... I mean, it just goes on... it's like these little circles. It starts out with my communications with him and it expands to all the systems in which he came in contact, the school system and the diversion program, the medical system...
Dr. G: Do you think that sometimes, people don't have the words to express themselves or the questions to get people to express themselves?
Sue: Right. Because words, they don't always work. They work sometimes. But even when people are asked if they're feeling suicidal, they're lying, and... sometimes, not always... so we just have to do a much better job of helping people who need it because they have some lethal condition, and nobody's seeing it, nobody's helping, and they're helpless and they're trapped and they don't have the tools, they don't have the skills, they don't have the words to help themselves.
Dr. G: Is that why you wrote the book and why you feel... I don't know if you've said this in your interviews, you may have, that you didn't have a choice. You had to write the book.
Sue: I felt that way. And this is what was so difficult because many people did not want me to write this book. But I've thought, "I have to write this book. If I couldn't write this book, I'd have no reason to go on. I have to write this book." So yes, it was very important for me to write this book. It was such a compulsion, there was nothing short of death that would've stopped me from writing this book.
Dr. G: So some people didn't want you to write this book?
Sue: To people who didn't want me to write this book, this book is always the elephant in the living room, and at times some people perceive me to be crazy to want to do it. But as I said, it was something I couldn't not do. It was like breathing, I couldn't... and I thought often about just dropping the whole idea and I couldn't. I mean, I wake up in the morning and I'm... I was... year after year, writing... talking to people... I was writing this book in my head. So yes, it's an absolute compulsion.
Dr. G: Is there any other reason for writing this book?
Sue: Yes, there's another reason. I know that there is the likelihood of there being another shooting. What I kept thinking is... for anyone who loves a child, if they have another issue, such as Dylan had, I want them to know that they can get some help.
I want people to know they can get help with their anxiety disorder as I have or that a child who is depressed can get help.
It's as much a love letter to people I know, people that I know who are in my world as it is to prevent school shootings in the world, it's to anybody who's suffering. Anyone that we know, all of our loved ones. For you, for me, for our kids and grandkids.
It's like, let us stop saying this about assuming that this was all about a parent who didn't care or parents who were inept, and let's really get down to what these issues are. And part of it was face saving and part of it was an opportunity to tell my story like The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner... I've got to talk about this because I never really had the chance to talk about it and I had this bursting out of me like some kind of an alien. I just wanted to talk about this and I needed to talk about it.
So yeah, there were many reasons why I wrote the book, many, and they changed over time.
Dr. G: Say more about the need to talk about it again and again especially for people who believe talking doesn't do anything.
Sue: I believe, with any kind of difficult situation in my life, any kind of trauma, any kind of... even an inconvenience, for me, when something I experience is painful, when I am thinking about what happened, I am feeling bad about what happened, I feel that I'm suffering because of what happened, it helps deaden the pain to talk about it and to talk about it again, and then to talk about it again, until it no longer hurts.
To me, telling a story is a process of desensitization. It lowers the pain level until finally, you've heard this story enough, you've experienced enough, talked about it enough that it ceases to hurt so much and, so yes, telling this story, to me, is an important part of healing from trauma and loss.
Being able to talk about it, being able to tell those stories about your loved ones over and over again. And I really didn't have much of a chance. Yes, I had a therapist and I had close friends, but it was different because it was such a huge event that the whole world knew about, and somehow, I wanted to communicate with the whole world to say, this may be what you perceive, but this is actually what happened.'
And I just felt a need, plus, I'm a creative person, I'm an artist, I like to write and I have the privilege of being able to tell a story that no one has heard before. And part of it is just my own artistic inclination of needing and wanting to tell a story, to make it be alive, to create something.
Dr. G: A lot of deeply traumatized people have trouble feeling happiness or joy and say they have gotten past the trauma but not over it. What do you think?
Sue: Well, there's one difference and that is, believe it or not, I'm a joyful person. I have a tremendous amount of gratitude. I love my life. I feel that everything that's happened to me, in a bizarre way, has been a gift. So I don't feel like I have some kind of complicated grief, that I never returned to joy. I feel that I've passed through a mirror and I'm living in a world very different from the one I knew before.
But I feel so surrounded by love and gratitude and joy most of the time, that part of me wants to share that with others, and that's one reason why I try to work with other survivors of murder-suicide loss and to talk about it... there is a kind of enlightenment, and you will get to a place where, in some odd way, you've been given a chance to experience something that only one in millions gets to experience, and because of that, you have a deeper, a broader understanding of something that nobody else will ever experience, and in its own peculiar way, that's a gift in itself.
Dr. G: Have you been able to find or form a group of parents of murder-suicides?
Sue: I have met quite a few of them. We don't have a support group, but, for example, when there are shootings, very often somebody will know somebody who will connect them to me and I am always happy to speak with survivors of murder-suicide loss if they would like someone to speak with.
I don't reach out to them because I understand how exposed you feel and how you don't want people to touch you or to find you or to glom on you, so I don't reach out to them. But I have made myself available and I have spoken with quite a few, several parents of shooters. It is my goal to try to educate people everywhere I go.
Dr. G: Right.
Sue: So if I reveal who I am, I know that this is a teaching opportunity for them to see the mother of a killer and see that the mother of a killer is very much like themselves. And one of the things I always try to do, immediately, is to make them feel comfortable with me, and that is the kind of thing I do. I reach out to people or I smile or I go "Yes, I know, it's hard to believe" and... I want them to be comfortable with me, so that is something that I relate to.
Dr. G: Have you ever thought that one of the elephants in the room is whoever is talking to you wants you to reassure them that their angry kid isn't your kid.
Sue: Boy, isn't that the truth. Yes.
Dr. G: And inside, they're saying, "You know, I've got a teenager that says leave me the f--- alone and slams the door," and so they're looking for anything they can hear from you that can reassure them that their moody teenager's not going to turn into Dylan.
Sue: Right.
Dr. G: And do you think they're also looking for evidence that there's something screwed up about you so they can say, you know, I'm not that parent.
Sue: Of course. Yes. It makes them feel much safer to think those things and that's one of the reasons this seething hatred and judgment sticks in homes and imprints for so long, because people can't let go. They just have to believe that I'm very different and that makes them feel safer and they just need that and they can't get past that.
Dr. G: So looking forward without editing what you're saying, just say, "what if we could do x?" and how that would lessen murder/suicides.
Sue: Right. I agree. I believe that brain health is the most important medical frontier, and it's not just behavioral issues, it's dementia, it's all the things that are taking a huge toll on society and we must put our resources and our best minds into this because it's important to all of us.
Dr. G: Are you concerned that people will mainly want to hear the details of your story and then lose interest when you make your recommendations about what to do to fix it?
Sue: Yes, I don't know what I can do about it.
Dr. G: You seem to have remarkable perseverance and your mission is so important to you, hopefully you'll be able to keep people's interest in this.
Going forward, can you say more about the frustration families have about reaching out for help with the current mental health system?
Sue: You know, that's really where all my "if only's" or "what if's" are for the future. It's just, we have GOT to do a better job with screening, diagnosis, treatment, follow-up, after care when you leave hospitalization. You know, a release from the hospital after a psychiatric hospitalization is probably at higher risk than if they'd never gone in at all. We really have a broken system and there are so many things... here's where there are things that I wish would happen and we can't even make this happen in our own state.
I think that suicide prevention education and awareness should be part of every curriculum where you work with people. It should part of educators' curricula, people in health care should have that. I know in our own state, we were trying to get this law to try to require counselors and psychiatrists to have at least a certain amount of suicide prevention training and we can't even get that passed here even though we're in the top 10 on the suicide rates.
And it's because of the system that we have here, it's very autonomous, and the professionals don't want to be told what they should be learning, so these are the kind of things that concern me, that we have to start... we have to get better things in place and make sure that people are more aware of these problems, and that once they're aware, they have something to do other than call the hotline. You know, there's got to be more than that.
Dr. G: Do you think people are too overwhelmed to do more than they're already doing?
Sue: I'm sure that's true, but not doing more can mean literally the difference between life and death and sometimes many deaths.
Dr. G: What is now one of the hardest things about this horrendous tragedy for you?
Sue: Well, one of the hardest things for me about all of this is how traumatic it is for me to be... to accidentally read what people say about me. That's one of the hardest things, where people hate me and judge me and call me a bitch. I would think by now, 17 years later, I could become desensitized to that, but I'm always speaking to that hidden critic, always sensing that whatever I say... it's like a Rubik's cube.... I have to look at, well, somebody who hates me will look at it this way or this way or this way.
Dr. G: So it must be difficult to let your guard down.
Sue: So yes, I'm certainly guarded and careful and to what extent I'm holding back or trying to protect myself, it's very much there. I can't imagine living without it.
Dr. G: Thank you Sue for taking the time and for being so open and even for letting your guard down a little for this conversation. Any final thoughts?
Sue: If you're a parent reading this, I have one request. If you have a moody child, of any age, or maybe early teens or older, I would like you to go to that child and say, "What is something that nobody in the world understands about you that causes you fear, pain or anger?'" And then, whenever they say whatever they say, let them finish and then say to them, "Tell me more." And then just listen. Don't rush in to give them advice when what they need is comfort.
Also realize that if you think your child is in a dark place and even if they push back, you don't need their permission to find out where they are and do everything you can to get them out. Do it for them, do it for yourselves, do it for me, because I only wish I had.
Dr. G: Let's hope this saves some lives.
Sue: That's what this is all about, isn't it?
Dr. G: Take good care Sue.
Sue: Thank you. I'll do my best.