September, 2010

Hello Family and Friends,

Thank you for visiting our web site. For some of you, this may be your first visit and we welcome you. We are a site dedicated to help others get to know Rachel Scott and to encourage you if you are experiencing difficult times.

Every month I share a small portion of the first book that was published about Rachel-"Rachel's Tears." This chapter is called Media Madness and comes from Rachel's father Darrell sharing his feelings of those first days after the shooting.

  

"Soon all the people connected with Columbine found themselves at the center of a media cyclone. The media people treated me with the utmost sensitivity, but for the first month, I participated in interviews and media events in a dreamlike daze punctuated by painful moments of despair. Much of the time I was half expecting Rachel to walk through the door.

One particularly difficult time came while I was taping an episode of "Oprah." Two years earlier, I had walked into my living room to find Rachel sitting and watching Oprah. She tilted her head, looked at me and said, "Dad, someday you're going to see me on Oprah."

I had forgotten all about that moment until I was walking onto the sound stage and I looked up to see Rachel's photo on she screen. My knees buckled, and I fell to the floor.

Oprah came over to see if I was all right, and I shared that memory with her. She started crying. During the taping that day, we had to stop the cameras twelve times because people in the studio were breaking down and weeping.

Perhaps I was in a state of shock during those months. If so, I think that was God's gracious way of preserving me from totally falling apart.

My primary feeling during the whole period was an over-whelming inability to breathe. I really wanted to breathe. I felt that if only somehow I could take a deep enough breath, I would burst the whole oppressive bubble I was stuck under, and Rachel would be there with me again.

Over the next few months, I met and talked with people like Larry King, Tom Brokaw, Elton John, and President and Mrs. Clinton, but there was numbness in everything I did. Nothing mattered to me at all, and it was as if everything in the world had the same bland vanilla taste.

Eventually the reality of the whole thing hit me. I would go to Rachel's grave and sob my guts out. I still visit her grave regularly. That's where I break down and cry. It is my point of release."

Next month we continue with more of my side of the story as we flip-flop back and forth with both of Rachel's parents. Please plan to come back in October. Have a great month!

God Bless,