A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy

I have decided to not finish this book for many reasons, but the final straw was this thoughtful and heartfelt essay written by Dylan's English teacher, the one who received the eerie short story he wrote:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/judithkelly/opinion-i-taught-at-columbine-it-is-time-to-speak-my-truth
I read almost half of this book, trying, trying, understanding that she was a mother above all. But she minimized and deflected, and retold incidents that had several witnesses—like the time at the river with friends when Dylan accidentally got wet and tantrumed-raged-because he was embarrassed.
In this book, Dylan is this family-centered, amazingly sensitive boy who makes his bed every morning, as if good people—or people with good traits—cannot do horrible things.
And then this article. Mrs. Klebold changed many significant details about her and her husband's meeting with Dylan's teacher about the school shooting fantasy short story. In Klebold's version, they were told little, knew less, and were instructed not to worry. I can't continue listening to her read her words and tell her journey on this audiobook, because that is a significant lie. I trusted her to share her heart truthfully. She didn't do so, so I have to walk away from the dialogue and not continue reading. Which, on the 20th anniversary of Columbine, breaks my heart a little. Because I wanted to feel for her. Her true story is so painful; it doesn't need to be embellished. And if she so fears still being judged, perhaps a memoir was not for her.
And shame on the publisher: this information specifically about this meeting with the teacher is in the FBI files, testified to under oath. Klebold's manuscript should have been vetted more carefully.

(An Audible listen). This is an excellent book.

I remember watching the news with horror as the Columbine shootings were reported when my first child was 18 months and I was pregnant with my second. At the time, I was thinking of the victims and the other students in the school. Now as a mother to three young adults I found this a hard listen as I know how possible it is that your children can hide their mental health struggles and the thought that anyone I might know and love could commit such an act is just horrific to contemplate. I also work in a school and know just how lacking the mental health support for students is (as it is for adults too).

Twenty four years on I don't think that America has learned the lessons we needed to, not just in regard to violence and school shootings but also with regard to suicide. Too many people think that there is a simplistic quick fix and do not want to invest in solutions they see as costly. It is too easy for people to turn their heads away until the problem hits close to home. Tech is not the solution to any of these problems. People problems need people solutions.

I like the comparison to risk assessment by one of the experts the author talked with who compared the issue with cardiovascular health. Diet, exercise, medication to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels will all save lives at the population level but you still can't predict who will have a heart attack and who won't. Similarly with suicide.

4.5/5

Overall, it was a very good book. She was very self aware and focused on brain health, which was awesome. Though, sometimes the way she spoke about him seemed a little too forgiving, it was, for the most part, very aware of what he'd done wrong.

I picked this up and put it back down a few times because it was so emotionally raw that I couldn't read for long stretches

Read this book

I have to admit, at first I wanted to read this book to find out more details about what could make someone do what Dylan and Eric did. What I didn't expect was that Dylan came from a wonderfully ordinary home with parents and a sibling who loved him and were very involved in his life. Sue writes an amazingly intelligent book that walks though her perspective of the time before, during and after Dylan's suicide. Such a sad story that really should be a wake-up call for parents.

Obviously a sad read but I found it thought provoking. Susan Klebold gives you a mother's point of view on a unthinkable tragedy.

In contemplating Slaughterhouse-Five, George Saunders wrote something that always sticks in my mind:

Now I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters. He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. . .We are meant to exit the book altered.

When Saunders wrote about Slaughterhouse-Five, he was speaking specifically about fiction, and even more specifically about the “absurd, invented material” Vonnegut employed to evoke genuine, “nontrivial” change in the reader's life – but I found myself thinking about his words as I read an account that is all too real, and unflinching. The amount of empathy and insight the mother of Dylan Klebold displays in this book is staggering. It seems impossible that a person could read this book and not emerge altered, which, when you think about it, is one of the highest compliments you could ever give to art.