The first night after he fled Columbine High School with his life and not an outward scratch, 16-year-old Grant Taylor dreamed he was a hero, wounded yet able to pull other students to safety.

The second night, he dreamed he was wounded and dying.

Although happy that he escaped, never even setting eyes on a gun, the tall, rangy sophomore said pensively a week later that he felt angry, and guilty. "I kind of wish I was there in the library, helping kids."

They call it survivor guilt.

Kids who ran away from the gunmen or hid under tables or in closets. Kids who saw classmates die or shot and bleeding. Teachers unable to help the kids in their care. Frantic parents forced to stand behind police lines for agonizing hours while children remained trapped in the school.

Long after the victims are buried and the scars faded, remorse can torment those who live through catastrophes.

Guilt has followed grief since April 20, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 fellow students, a teacher and themselves.

"I feel like it's not fair," said Megan Frye, 14, a Columbine freshman.

Her mother, Debra Frye, stood close by her side as the pair walked arm-in-arm visiting the makeshift shrine of flowers and messages spread over Clement Park, next to the tightly guarded school-turned-crime scene. With her daughter shaken and momentarily without a school to attend, Debra Frye took off the week from her job as a landscape architect.

Megan hid her tears behind sunglasses, but said she also felt fortunate. "I just feel so lucky to still be here."

The more the survivors witnessed, the greater the sense that they might have done more.

"The guilt usually comes later, when they feel that they might have been able to do more to help themselves or to help their friends," said Jeff Dolgan, chief of psychology at Children's Hospital of Denver. "But what they don't understand is these kinds of situations take their autonomy away. They're immobilized."

They'll need support and caring listeners, he said. They may experience flashbacks, terrifying dreams and odd reactions to unrelated events, such as loud noises or setting foot in a new school. They may become clingy and dependent.

Parents, too, may suffer guilt, Dolgan said. "A parent might have been restrained from doing something. Within 10 minutes the parents might have got there (to the school during the siege) and the police said 'You can't save your own babies.' "

Greg Martinez was grateful that his 16-year-old, Laura, escaped unharmed from Columbine where she was a junior, but his gratitude is tinged with regret.

"We feel for the other parents like anybody would," Martinez said. "You almost feel guilty, about, you know, having your kid get out. Because we have a lot of friends in the community. She played soccer with a lot of these girls. As a matter of fact, we attended three funerals this week, and it's been hard for us."

Worried parents have sought counseling help for youngsters who escaped, said Tom Olbrich, a social worker in charge of emergency services at The Jefferson Center for Mental Health in Arvada, a private, nonprofit agency acting as a clearinghouse for those seeking counseling as a result of the killings.

One woman reported that her daughter was feeling a lot of guilt, "wondering why she should live when other people died."

Another girl, who was splattered with blood, replays the scene in her mind like a continuous mental video. She felt the hot, sticky blood "and kept feeling like she can't get it off her."

"That's a normal kind of response," Olbrich said, "to an abnormal kind of situation."

His own 15-year-old son, Ryan, reports nightmares of snipers at the school — even though he never went to Columbine.

Olbrich said those who feel guilty for making it out alive need to be reassured that they can celebrate their survival.

"To be under a table means you did a lot to save your own life," he said. "Or when they got outside, did they say kind words? Did they hug somebody? We have to help them understand. They were brave to go to the vigil, brave to go to the funeral."

May 2, 1999

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