Finding the space to breathe

Columbine family hopes film will aid parents who grieve

The film opens with a series of snapshots, snippets of home movies, and an impending sense of utter sorrow.

A teenage boy smiles on a couch. A little girl with a white ribbon in her hair beams in a flowery dress. A freckle- faced boy tilts his head and squints in an innocent smile. A young man does a back flip into a swimming pool.

As the images roll by, you realize that each one captures a happy moment in the life of someone who is dead.

The pictures continue. One shows a 5-year-old boy in a Bugs Bunny T-shirt, making a funny face as he pulls his hand, gooey with pumpkin guts, out of his Halloween creation and his younger brother throws open his mouth in unbridled little-boy joy. Later, the boy wears a life jacket that looks a little too big as he smiles at the controls of a boat. And still later, he appears again - much older now, a red Santa's hat on his head, his younger brother snuggling with Cassie, their Chesapeake Bay retriever, in front of the Christmas tree.

That boy's name is Matt Kechter. He was killed eight years ago today in the library at Columbine High School.

And his mom and dad, Ann and Joe Kechter, hope their involvement in the forthcoming documentary Space Between Breaths will somehow help others see that they can face their grief, that they can go on with their lives.

"That," Ann said, "you can suffer the most incomprehensible event and still have hope for the future."

Touched by music

In August 1999, four months after two youths killed a dozen classmates and a teacher at Columbine, the new school year arrived. And it brought overwhelming emotions to the Kechters.

"Matt should have been back there," Ann says. "He should have been a junior."

In the midst of that emotional upheaval, a woman named Cindy Bullens sent them - and other Columbine families - a copy of her CD, Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth. Bullens, a former backup singer for Elton John and a two-time Grammy nominee, wrote the music after losing her daughter, Jessie Bullens-Crewe, to an infection that erupted while she was being treated for Hodgkin's disease.

The music touched the Kechters deeply, and they asked Bullens for permission to use the album's title track on a video they were making of Matt's life. She agreed - and came to Denver, where she performed a private concert for the Columbine families.

A friendship developed, and the Kechters have been Bullens' guests at other concerts in the past few years.

At the same time, Rosemary and Luther Smith of Beattyville, Ky., were living with their own loss. Two of their sons, Drew, 18, and Jeremiah, 15, had been killed in a car accident in July 1992.

"That kind of really started us on a spiritual journey, I guess, to help ourselves, to try to help others," Rosemary Smith said.

Rosemary had written a book about the experience, Children of the Dome, and put together "bereavement packages" that include inspirational books, poems and videos that she sends to parents who lose children.

Over time, they came to see how grief transformed people, often in surprisingly inspirational ways. The Smiths, who own a pharmacy company, decided they wanted to make a documentary that would explore grief from an inspiring perspective.

As they thought about the kinds of people they wanted to include, some seemed natural. A family who lost a son in Iraq. Someone who buried a child after Sept. 11. A Columbine family.

Cindy Bullens, who was already involved in the project, suggested the Kechters. She called them.

They agreed to think about it. The truth is, they were reluctant.

'Getting our life back'

Joe and Ann sit at the kitchen table of their mountain home in Jefferson County. The sun is long gone behind the ridge, and darkness has descended on the meadow beyond their back deck. Their son, Adam, is downstairs. Their daughter, Ashley, is in her room, doing her homework.

The remains of a couple of pizzas sit on the stove.

And they talk about losing a son in such a public way, about what it's been like these past eight years, about what the families of those killed earlier this week at Virginia Tech may be facing.

"We feel like we had so many resources handed to us," Ann said. "And so many people who lose a child don't have that."

There's a lot they've learned since the Columbine shootings, lessons they would share with the Virginia Tech families who are where they were eight years ago - trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

They know that some people won't be able to talk to those families, like their friends who turned and went the other way in the grocery store because they didn't know what to say.

They know that there will be days when those families feel like they're crazy - like Ann did after the night she slept in Matt's bed, surrounded by his clothes - but that it's just normal grieving.

And they know that, eventually, they will again find happiness.

"It's been eight years for us," Ann said. "I have to say the first five were rough. . . . I think the last two it feels like we're getting our life back."

And yet, they still feel funny about the attention they find themselves receiving as another Columbine anniversary arrives, this one against the backdrop of what happened four days ago at Virginia Tech.

"Here you are - it's another year, and you're doing an article on us," Ann said. "So many people lose their precious child - that was just as precious to them as Matt was to us - and they don't get that.

"I know that we're not any more special than any of the other families."

Lending their support

Ultimately, the Kechters agreed to be part of the project that became Space Between Breaths, which premieres May 31 in Lexington, Ky.

It didn't happen immediately. But they were taken by Rosemary Smith's work.

"I think it was that when we got to talking to her, that she wanted to help other people that are going through what we are," Joe said.

So they agreed, spending time in front of the camera, talking for hours about where they have been, and where they are today.

"There's so many people out there - they don't get that kind of support," Ann said. "Hopefully it will help them, give them comfort."

They joined many others. People like Les Franklin of Denver, who lost two sons to suicide and who operates the Shaka Franklin Youth Foundation as part of a wide-ranging effort to prevent young people from taking their own lives. Like Bullens. Like Tessie Hunter, who had lost a daughter many years before and whose son, Joseph, a New York City firefighter, died on Sept. 11, 2001. Like Frank and Rose Fotia, who lost their son, Gregory, after a lifelong battle against multiple disabilities. Like Donna Bellman, whose son, Marine Sgt. Michael Bitz, was killed March 23, 2003, in Iraq.

And like Maria Housden, whose daughter, Hannah Martell, died a month before her fourth birthday after being diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on her kidney.

The film looks at everything from faith - many in the movie had their belief in God shaken by their loss - to the awkward moments when people don't know what to say. And it looks at the ways people took their grief and found a way to use it to help others.

Like Les Franklin's youth programs. Like Sue Ann Duffy, who pushed for changes to the Tennessee laws governing teen drivers after her son was killed in a car accident. Like Paul and Claudia Grammatico, who lost their son, Paul, to a drunken driver and who devote a lot of their energy to the organ donor program in New York.

Like the Kechters' work, along with many other Columbine families, to raise the money to build a library at the school and construct a proper memorial to those who were lost on April 20, 1999.

Finding the space

Joe and Ann Kechter see new snapshots in their lives - happy pictures of special moments, of joy they've found again.

Not long ago, Ann got a horse, Chico, that the family boards at a ranch about 20 minutes from their home. She and Ashley ride often, and it's been a special new phase in their relationship.

But sometimes Ann goes out, alone, to ride and think.

Horses, she said simply, "saved me."

"Other than your family, that's what keeps you going," she said. "It's the first thing that I would wake up for and be excited about."

For the longest time after Matt died, all she could think was: "Tomorrow I'm going to get up and breathe."

One day Ann was on her horse, out in a valley, alone with her thoughts. As she rode, she talked to God, and to Matt.

Just then, a hawk - a creature that symbolized Matt's spirit to her and Joe - sailed by high above her.

The other 12 victims

who were slain eight years ago today at Columbine High School.

Cassie Bernall

Steven Curnow

Corey DePooter

Kelly Fleming

Daniel Mauser

Dan Rohrbough

Dave Sanders

Rachel Scott

Isaiah Shoels

John Tomlin

Lauren Townsend

Kyle Velasquez

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