Columbine: 10 Years Later
For the first time, on that same Saturday, I started telling my parents — again, haltingly and choppily — about the day of the shootings. I told them, "Bombs were exploding all over the place. Frightening. I could not believe it was true."Then Mom, who took handwritten notes on our exchanges that week, told me "the two boys" who did it were dead.
"Please forgive them," I said. "Forgive them."
I have no idea where those words came from. I was having trouble putting complete sentences together, and I came up with that: "Forgive them."
My mother was flabbergasted. She knew I probably overheard her calling Klebold and Eric Harris "bastards" earlier that week. She turned her head away and cried for a few seconds. She had mixed feelings about it because of how she felt about Klebold's and Harris' actions, but she had been praying that if I recovered, I wouldn't be consumed by bitterness. So when I said that, she knew I probably could overcome those psychological obstacles. But when she composed herself, she asked me, "Why should I forgive them?"
I said, "They did not mean to do it. They were confused. They were confused."


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