by Helena Tym
I left the room first. Someone had to make the first move and I didn’t think I could bear to see him like that any more. Steely was going to be the last one to leave - he had his own last message - words only for Cyrus, and he had things he wanted to leave in with him. I don’t know what - only he and Cyrus will know. All those nights they shared, talking to each other through their bedroom wall; all those years they shared. They needed one more secret. He so loved his older brother. Oh God, Steely, how the hell do we move forward from this?
As we took our last look, Rob asked, ‘All right mate?’ Steely’s nod was barely noticeable. ‘Yeah,’ was the whispered reply - and we walked away and closed the door. Steely hadn’t planned to leave it, and I’m not sure he was aware he had, but he left his childhood in that room that day. I hoped he wouldn’t be too long inside - I needed to go. I couldn’t be here any longer. We sat in the car numb, almost unable to leave, knowing there would now be only the four of us. Would I ever get used to that number? No.
I live in pockets of time. They have no seconds, minutes or hours. They are just pockets. Some are deeper than others. Some are clear, but most are dark and scary. I don’t like being alone in those pockets, but like my nightmares they are mine, and I can’t share them. They are my own personal sores. Sores that weep, and no matter how much you clean them, they don’t scab over and heel... like my blistering skin.
I want my ‘normal’ back - my ‘ordinary’. There is no anger, just pain - hot searing pain, that electrocutes you, causing blisters and opening those festering sores. I put on my brave face, but I have to strangle the screams in case they jump out and bite the faces off the people around me.
When I’m alone I’m not so brave. The sobs come in waves, racking my body and leaving me exhausted. Sometimes I have to stuff my fingers into my mouth to stop myself from sobbing.
I’m now part of an exclusive group that I’ve no wish to be in. Every death is personal, but now I share a common agony. Stripped entirely of any power to do anything to help, I feel useless. What do I say to someone else who is going through this? How can I be of use? Perhaps just knowing how they feel is enough; they too will understand in time, I guess, as more and more of us join this group.
As a mother I’m supposed to be able to make things better for my children - bathe their grazes and soothe their fevers. I can’t help Zac and Steely though. I can’t kiss it better and make the pain go away; this is another torture I face. How can it be that this has happened and I have no way of making it better? It rips me apart knowing that Rob and the boys are suffering, and there is nothing I can do to help. I feel useless. All my instincts are to nurture and protect - but this is out of my league, and I’m at a loss as to what to do. I can’t even help myself, so I know rationally there is nothing I can do to help them - but you can’t stop instincts.
It’s the loss of power and one’s ability to help, knowing Rob as I do - someone who has always been able to make everything ok, fiercely devoted to us as a family, strong and capable, hard-working and honest - reduced to a shell. I am completely unable to help this man whom I have loved since we first met at school in Henley-on-Thames when I was thirteen and he fourteen. His fair hair now shows signs of greying over his ears, and his eyes have lost their deep blue lustre. We’ve lost our youth. We’ve lost ourselves. The people we were have gone.
What does our future hold? Everything we do goes back to the fact that we have three sons - but now only two remain. It throws us off balance. I used to struggle with three small children because I had only two hands to hold them. Now I long for that struggle again. With every new child I grew a new heart - a heart that was as full and capable of loving as my others, a heart for each child. I have a lifeless heart now, still full of love but empty all the same... a space that cannot flourish any more. My other hearts will continue to grow, and with each new second of my children’s lives they will swell and make room... but one remains the same size, never to bloom again. It hurts because it can’t grow, but it will never go or fade - just sit there in my chest as a constant reminder that I have three children.
If sorrow were an old coat it would be nice to be able to take it off for a day, and be relieved of the weight of it. I know that I would have to put it back on again, but it would be an attractive thought, to be able to unburden myself for a while. I need a means whereby I can extract the agony from my brain. Sometimes I think I’m going to implode from the sheer pressure.
Arriving home, exhausted with the whole process, I thought I’d already plummeted the lowest level I could possibly reach - but that was deeper than low. Nothing can be as wretched as the things we have just had to do. Say ‘goodbye’, take one last look, one last touch, one last secret. This is the ultimate pain, and the last time we would ever see him.
We just sat, unable to talk, too wrapped up in our own glue to help each other. Nothing could be said to erase those awful memories - nothing can be said to make it better. My splintered family - my men gone in a moment, never to be the same again. Changed.
It wasn’t in the kitchen - nowhere near it, in fact - and Steely was the one who found it, in a small white-painted wooden box that had been my younger brother Sam’s toy-box, and which Cyrus had used as a bedside table. The ‘Sam’ box was the keeper of this treasure. A couple of hours after we had come back from saying our last goodbyes to our most precious soldier-son, Steely was going through some of Cyrus’s things and he came across it.
‘I’ve found it! He did write a letter,’ Steely said, coming downstairs two at a time. He held it as though it was an ice-cube that might melt in his hands, and then sat down with us and read it out loud. He was so brave reading it, tears streaming down his cheeks, sobbing uncontrollably and choking on the words, absolutely determined to carry on, no matter how much they burned and twisted into his heart and brain.
Chapter 5: The Last Letter
He had written something to each of us. How he managed to write such a letter I’ll never know. Magnificent, amazing, brave, kind and thoughtful are just some of the words that spring to mind when I think of him in his room, writing to us before he had even left the country. How the hell do you write a letter to be opened on your death? I don’t think I could do it and I’m so proud of him for having done it. What a man. I so wish we had never had to see its contents; I wish he had been able to retrieve it and take it away with him. I wish he had never had to write it. I just wish he was here.
In his letter his intention was to leave us the tools to carry on. He simply didn’t think that it would take us a lifetime to learn to use them - if we manage to learn at all. I miss him so much. I can’t take in the fact that I’ll never see him again. It doesn’t make sense to me somehow. It shouldn’t be happening to us. It doesn’t seem real.
I’m not sure how much pain one heart can take, and I really do understand now how people die of broken hearts. I’m not going to die just yet, but sometimes it feels like it. It would be a relief from this desolateness I feel on a daily basis - but I could never leave Rob, Zac and Steely. I’ve not even considered taking my own life - that would seem such a selfish way out. Yet I’m not sure if you have reached that stage in the agony that is your life, that you are actually thinking straight about the consequences, and the people you leave behind. It is the people who have to carry on that the pain never leaves.
I know that I will always have this pain. Like the glue, it’s now part of my soul and nothing but my own death will alleviate it - this selfish glue that has settled in my veins. My death will come when it’s ready but not now, and I’ll not have a hand in speeding it up.
Perhaps we are born with a time-line. None of us knows the length of that line and so, if we are lucky and determined enough, we live our lives as if every day was our last, enabling us to squeeze in everything we can before the end of the line is reached. If this is so, then I would like to think that Cyrus did just that. He did ever
ything he wanted to do before his time was up - or at least as much as he could manage in nineteen and a half years. I think he did, and this is partly what he was trying to tell us in his letter. I know he knew how very much we loved him.
They are all so different, my boys - such different personalities, likes and dislikes. Steely obsessed with drumming and a desire for life, with a drive that will ultimately see him make a career in music - and a sense of humour that will ensure he will never be without a circle of good friends.
Zac hasn’t found his niche. Another music lover, going to as many festivals and concerts as he can throughout the year, a head-banger with his fair hair and goatie beard. He works with Rob at the moment, he’s good with his hands, is artistic and has a heart of gold. He will do well in life, has the right attitude - is made of the right stuff.
Then there was Cyrus, who wanted to join the Army. The middle son, the obsessive one who constantly craved attention as a child. He too loved music; Motown, Michael Jackson, Eminem, rap and hip-hop - and even the occasional heavy metal track. A perfectionist when it came to his looks - hair had to be ‘just so’; his clothes - designer labels and snug-fitting, so as to show off his muscles; being a soldier, had to be the best at everything; competitive, aggressive, noisy, fun and loyal. He was the 137th serviceman to die from hostile fire in Afghanistan, while the deaths from enemy action in Iraq stand at 136. He would have liked that - being the one that tipped the scales. It would have made him feel important. He was important, is important, will forever be important.
Sometimes they shared a look, a tilt of the head, the way the corners of their mouths twitched when they teased each other. A confident gait, blue eyes, two red-heads and one fair - not ‘peas in a pod’ as so many other families are. I hope Zac and Steely manage to fulfil their dreams and live the best lives they can, even though they have been touched by tragedy. Perhaps it will make them stronger people - kinder and more understanding of others and their weaknesses. Well, I suppose it will or it won’t, but that is something that I can have no hand in. They have to lead their own lives, and make their own decisions. I will be there to help and support if they need me, but they are men now, and I have to stand back and watch.
I know they will always make me proud. They are the sort of people that others like to be around. I like being around them - they make me smile. I love them and I hope they will always know that I do.
Cyrus’s letters from the front line and his last letter were published in The Independent because of a chance meeting with the journalist Terri Judd in Wootton Bassett. She had asked us if we had received any letters whilst he was in Afghanistan, and if so could she see them, as she was writing a piece about soldiers’ letters home. We agreed and she came to see us a couple of days later. She read the seven that he’d written and then asked if he’d left a last letter. We weren’t quite sure what to say - it was such a personal letter. These were his final words to us as a family, and we had been the only ones to read them. She explained that she had written one to her mother as she had been out to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and after talking to some other soldiers, realised that it was something quite a few of them did, so it made sense to write one of her own - just in case. Rob and I were reluctant at first; Zac was away and Steely not too keen. He thought that it was addressed to us and it should remain that way, but we agreed that she could read it and see what she thought. ‘It’s amazing. If you could share this with people it would be fantastic, as he has said things many people only think and don’t dare write down,’ was what she said. We decided to let her take a copy, and we agreed that there were certain parts (to the boys) that we would omit because, as Steely said, they were personal to them and he didn’t want it all public.
What a response. Who would have thought that those letters could have had such an impact on people? Both radio and television interviews came on the back of their publication. It was his last one that really struck people. Grown men were having to pull over into lay-bys because they were crying. Oh God, Cyrus, if only you knew. Such wise words from someone so young. You have touched so many lives, my darling. I wish you knew.
How can it be that I’ll never see him again? The searing pain keeps getting stronger, eating into the fibres of my body, corroding me from inside. I can feel it well up from my toes. It makes my bones ache. This sadness is overwhelming - it consumes me, stopping me in my tracks and paralysing me. I seem constantly to be searching for soggy tissues tucked into waistbands or pockets of jeans.
I’m sure I’m depressed. I’ve talked about that before, but I think I am. I don’t want to go to the doctor, though. They have enough to deal with because of all this swine flu stuff. Anyway, I don’t think a pill can help mend a broken heart. There are no words of comfort, and no magic cure. This will just have to run its course and drag me with it.
I see his face, those blue, blue eyes. That smile. The trouble is you can’t hear a smile or see those eyes blink again. How the hell do I go on? Where am I going on to? What do I do when I get there - if I get there? I don’t want this to be happening. I want him back home. Not under a mound of dirt that we tend like a treasured garden. Just home, safe and alive. But I know I can’t have that wish - not now, not ever. It’s more than I can bear at times. Now is one of those times. I’m not having a very good morning so far. Perhaps this afternoon will be better.
You can’t properly describe dreams or nightmares, and I think it is the same with grief. In your head it makes sense, but when you say the words out loud to someone else, they become jumbled and confused. They then confuse me, and I get to the point when I’m not really sure they made sense in the first place, even though they were straight in my head to begin with. Perhaps this truly is madness. Yes - I think I’m mad. There. I’ve said it now.
It doesn’t make me feel better though, admitting I’m mad. It’s that glue again, clogging my thoughts, making everything confused and sticky. Enough now, I’ll write again but enough for today.
I wonder if someone else will read this one-day and understand. I hope so. I hope that this strange collection of words will bring comfort to someone somewhere. I know I’m not the only person in the world who feels like this. I am very lonely, though. Grief is lonely. It’s like lying on your back in the dark, being swept along a cold underwater river. Freezing water seeps into your very being, disabling you, making it impossible to determine up from down or left from right. Or perhaps it’s a cold fog, moving across the river. Everything is disjointed and moves at a different pace. I feel like I’m looking down at myself, but if I reach out I can’t touch anything. Perhaps this is an out-of-body experience.
When I first looked at the photos that we had developed from his camera, it was like looking at someone else’s life. Now when I look at them I know that they are of him and his life in Afghanistan and before, and I find them so much harder to look at. One of Cyrus and Paul Mervis, standing between two Military Police Officers on a dirt road in Kosovo. Still in Kosovo, Cyrus with a radio head-set on, sitting in front of a wall studded with bullet holes with a little dark-haired boy in a torn, dirty maroon T-shirt, sitting beside him. Both are smiling at the camera, Cyrus’s gun across their knees. Such a contrast in their looks - the child with his dark brown hair, almost black eyes and Mediterranean skin, and Cyrus with his freckles, blue eyes and sunburnt nose. He always had such an easy way with children - maybe it was his smile that made him irresistible to them.
There are photos of the desert in Afghanistan; incredibly beautiful mountains in the background and a young soldier aiming an enormous gun out across the land from the parapet walls - a big smile as he knew he was being photographed. In one of his letters Cyrus had written, ‘If you could see what I’m looking at now you’d be pretty shocked, it’s pretty stunning to be honest.’
Looking through his photos, I can see what he means about the scenery. He also went on to say, ‘I could probably sling-shot a stone f
rom where we were last contacted (shot at) ha ha ha, pretty fucking scary, hey!’ What a reminder of how dangerous that country is - and their ability to smile and pose for a camera while on look-out for an enemy that is, probably, within easy range.
Then Cyrus bare-chested on a quad bike, laughing at the camera, surrounded by tents, men, equipment, and the dust that gives everything a slightly orange tinge. Soldiers sitting on the edge of vast poppy fields, looking relaxed - but I’m sure they are on full alert, aware of their surroundings and its dangers. Men lying on camp beds jammed together tightly, resting, waiting, smoking, writing letters home, reading and listening to iPods. They all look so young.
Somehow he had managed to set his camera up to take a photo of him and Elliott within a frame of a large blue heart, with ‘love’ written across it. The biggest grins on their faces, playing up to the camera - such great friends.
27th April - Afghanistan
I’ve been thinking of loads of things and places to do, go and see. Me and Elliott are going to go to Amsterdam after this. I THINK WE MAY HAVE DESERVED IT!!
Then my favourite photograph - one of him on his own, in what looks like a large wooden box, which I assume must be a gun turret, covered with camouflage netting, a gun on a tripod to his right. He’s wearing his helmet and looking directly at the camera, giving it a ‘thumbs up’. As always, he is smiling. I find myself kissing his face and then the tears start again. The emptiness returns and I don’t know how I’ll cope.
I’ve not written anything for a couple of weeks. Perhaps I thought I’d said all there was to say. Not so. If I share this with people, will they get even the slightest inkling as to how I feel - as to how Rob, Zac and Steely feel? Would it have the same effect as Cyrus’s letters? No, their impact was that fact that he was so young, yet able to write so beautifully and thoughtfully about us, and about what he would like us to be able to do. I don’t think he fully understood the devastation his death would bring. I don’t think he thought he was as important and vital to us as a family as he was. I know he knew he was loved, but I don’t think he knew just how much he would be missed, and by how many people.