by Helena Tym
We had to walk down a steep path towards the graveside at Aldershot Military Graveyard and the soldiers’ steel-capped shoes slipped - it was easier to walk on the grass. The cemetery was huge, beautifully kept, peaceful - but again not somewhere I wanted to be. It was not how I wanted to meet Paul and his family. We had been so desperate to meet this man when we got his letter. He was the connection to Cyrus and this whole war - and now here we were, attending his funeral.
It was to be a Jewish ceremony and the men were asked to wear a small black kippah. No flowers - only poems and prayers read by his brother and sister, eulogies from friends and colleagues. Different service, different place, different people - same outcome.
Before the ceremony we were introduced to a pale young man in a wheelchair. His name was Matt Wilson (Willo), who like Cyrus was part of C Company 10 Platoon under Paul’s command and the Sunday after Cyrus was killed he had his leg blown off at the knee while on patrol. Because he was so heavily sedated due to his injuries, he had been unable to attend Cyrus’s funeral, but he had recovered sufficiently and had insisted he be allowed out of hospital for the day to attend Paul’s. He still had dried blood on his hands and under his fingernails. He looked so small and white - a ghost of a man, so young to face death and mutilation. His eyes filled with tears when he took my hand and said how sorry he was about Thatch. Amazing, these men who become soldiers.
What the hell was I supposed to say to him? His mum was with him, and we both cried for Cyrus, for Paul and for Matt. She had already given so much; her husband - a soldier too - was killed in a blast in Northern Ireland when Matt was four years old. Surely this is too much pain for one family to take.
Serjeant Leon Smith was there too. He had tears in his eyes. He said he would always blame himself for Cyrus’s death, and said it should have been him instead. I told him that there was no blame to be had. We would never blame him or anyone else. Cyrus did exactly what he wanted to do, and if his orders were to be at that place at that time, then he followed them to the letter, as any soldier would have done.
Leon has the agony of having to live with the vision of what happened, while I only have to live with the picture I’ve painted in my head. I don’t know if I could cope with the real thing. Leon was still waiting to hear from Selly Oak Hospital about his hearing tests. His hearing had been damaged by the blast and unless the doctors thought it was up to scratch, he wasn’t going to be allowed to return to Afghanistan. I think that was frustrating him. He felt completely useless here when his men were still out there fighting and trying to cope without him, Paul, Matt and Cyrus. I don’t know if anyone else was injured from 10 Platoon after Cyrus and Paul were killed - we don’t get that information. No-one does, but I think we should know - I’d like to be able to go and visit these men in hospital and tell them how brave I think they are, and that I think about them every day. I think we were deliberately kept away and, looking back, it makes sense. For all our good intentions, the parents of the dead visiting the living was probably not the best thing for them.
Grief and glue, sombre men and women in black standing on the grass watching as Paul was lowered into the ground. That was the point at which I had felt my heart break the Friday before, when we too had had to watch as Cyrus was lowered into the cold earth. So many people had thrown roses on Cyrus’s coffin - so many young people constricted by grief, haunted by the process of saying goodbye to a much-loved friend, and not really comprehending the enormity of it all.
Parents and siblings having to say goodbye, consumed by choking glue and burning eyes - what could I say that didn’t sound hollow? In the end, I went up to Margaret when we were in the Officers’ Mess for the wake, and held her hand. She knew exactly what I wanted to say without me having to utter a word. ‘After all,’ she whispered, ‘you are the only person in this room who knows how I truly feel.’ Yes, I understood - but I wished I didn’t.
We met some of the wives - young girls with sadness and worry in their eyes. Their men were still out there; they have to go through the agony of hearing reports and hoping that it’s not their man. They have young children and I worry for them all. I too am scared that I will recognise a name. I dread the phone ringing at odd hours just in case it is someone Cyrus was especially close to. I don’t know if any of them are injured and in hospital somewhere. I wish I knew, so I could write and tell them I’m thinking of them.
If you look up ‘grief’ in a thesaurus there are nineteen other words of similar meaning. No one word can capture it, though. You can’t trap grief in a word. None, in fact, is completely accurate, because grief changes - the grief I felt an hour ago is different from the grief I’m facing now, and it’s no good trying to get used to the grief I feel today, as I know it will be a different grief tomorrow - but they all form part of how I feel.
I don’t know if I had a timescale in mind when I might start to feel a part of my new life. Today, only ten weeks on, and yet I seem to have been at this point in time for years. Some days are definitely worse than others; they are all awful, but some more so than others.
I don’t want people’s pity. I can’t have their understanding because they don’t understand. I’m not really sure what I want from friends and family. Just a second of their time - not too much or it becomes too hard to cope with. Just enough to skim across a thought or touch lightly on a phrase. Rather like being visited in hospital. You want to see people, but only for long enough to know that they have been - not long enough to have to talk to them. Does that make sense? Again, my head is playing tricks. I know what I’m thinking but when I write it down it comes out wrong. Maybe one day these words will make sense - dreams and glue bound together in confusion and wretchedness.
Wretched is a good word. Retch is what I want to do every time I think about the fact that I will never see Cyrus again. Along with scream and pull my hair, plunge a knife into my heart - blow my brains out. Of course I’ll never do any of these things.
I have a picture in my mind of the last time I saw him. He was standing on the brick pier of the steps at the front of our house, waving. We had taken him to Heathrow Airport the day before, and prepared our goodbyes, only to discover his flight times had been changed, and he wouldn’t be flying back to Belfast until the next day. This was great in one way, as it meant we had another night with him, but not so good in another, as the timing clashed with an appointment I had to attend with Zac. It was Rob who would take him back to the airport. So we have separate memories of the last time we saw him - mine are connected with him waving goodbye from the top of the steps, while Rob’s with dropping him off at Heathrow Airport and sharing a last cigarette. Rob had given up smoking when he was thirty-one, so it was only when Zac and Cyrus started to smoke that he would occasionally have the odd puff. When Cyrus was home on leave he would stand at the back door and say ‘Tab?’ and Rob would follow him out to sit at the table on the decking, and share a cigarette and a shot of Sambuca. It is a ritual he still shares with Zac - I know it holds memories for them both.
That day he was wearing his favourite baby-blue jumper and jeans. He was tall, slender and handsome - so full of life. His broad grin showed off his straight white teeth - he still wore his retainer at night, having worn braces for so long he wasn’t prepared to let his teeth get crooked again. His hair short and neat, ready for action. I wonder if he’d already decided his hair would not be cut again until his return home on leave, from Afghanistan, in July.
I wonder if you can run out of tears. I ask myself all these stupid questions over and over again. It is all so exhausting. My feet feel like lead, and my brain won’t work properly. I can’t be bothered to do anything - everything is an effort and yet I need to keep myself doing something or I’ll go insane. Having too much time to think isn’t a good thing.
Chapter 8: Five Boxes
The Army told us they would send back his belongings. I can’t remember at what point th
ey arrived - Ian brought them for us in a white van. Five large cardboard boxes. Was this what his life had amounted to? Nineteen and a half years - five large cardboard boxes? We lifted them gingerly into the front room. We now couldn’t move because of them; our front room is quite small, and they filled it.
The first one we opened contained his double duvet and pillows. They went straight in the car, destined for the tip. Steely, Rob and I worked our way through the others. At one point I had to leave the room and Rob got cross - not really with me, but just with the horror of the whole situation. ‘Don’t you dare walk away and turn your back on him. What makes you think I can do this, when you don’t think you can?’ He was right. I came back in and we started again.
One box contained his Henry Hoover. I remember when he phoned and told me that he’d bought it. Here I am, crying over a fucking Hoover and ticking it off the inventory list. His shoes and socks went into the car, together with other pieces of clothing that we knew no-one would wear or want to keep for sentimental reasons.
He loved clothes, always making an effort to look ‘just right’ - even wearing a different aftershave each side of his face because he wanted to smell nice. Before he joined the Army it would be all about brand names and appearance, which would frustrate Rob as an avid outdoor-pursuits-man who believes the way to go is hardwearing, warm, dry and practical. He’s right, of course, because you can’t climb mountains, go down caves and kayak in a pair of Armani jeans.
The boys would always rib their dad about how he looked and dressed while on the many adventures he took them on. There was the day-sack, kitted out as though an Arctic expedition was imminent, and a survival kit that would have kept us all alive for months should we ever be stranded on a deserted island. These items came along first and foremost wherever we went, be it a two week holiday or a walk in the woods.
Whenever we arrived anywhere on holiday, I would find myself scanning the horizon, knowing that the highest point, at some stage, would have to be scaled - undertaken at first light as though it were a full-scale military operation. There were always groans from the boys and me, but every expedition would be a true adventure, and thoroughly enjoyed.
Amazing the change the Army made - there was clothing and equipment in those boxes that Rob would love to have had with us on those adventures.
All sorts of other things went into the car for their final journey to the tip. His bed, old bits and pieces that he’d kept for one reason or another, but didn’t make sense to us, and which therefore it seemed pointless to keep them. Even, as extreme as it seems, all the stud walls from his room went out alongside the shoes and socks. Steely was struggling to sleep having to walk past his room every night, so the walls came down, and now he has one huge room that is void of Cyrus, yet so much of him is still there as part of it.
We didn’t want his old room to become a shrine - how do you ever move forward if you keep it ‘as it was’? He didn’t live here any more, he just came home every so often, and slept in his old room, under his old duvet, talking to his brother through the wall - sharing secrets. A shrine would have been too painful to walk past. Would I leave the blind closed, or should I open it to make it not all seem so scary and depressing? No, we wouldn’t use his room as a shrine.
We have a wooden trunk in the front room underneath his army photos and framed medals - that’s our shrine. It’s one that we can take with us, if we ever leave this house. It’s one that isn’t scary or dark. It’s one that I still can’t look at without wondering how we managed to put his life into such a small box. It’s one that makes me cry.
Inside this trunk are the things that his soldier’s life was about. His beret, his medals, his belt, his dog-tags and the carefully folded flag that was draped over his coffin. All the cards and letters we got are in shoeboxes in there too. The only thing that we haven’t managed to look at is the poncho on which he was carried off the battlefield. The soldiers of C Company wrote messages on it, but I can’t bear to look - it’s just too painful. How the hell do you write on a blood-covered poncho that you’ve carried your dead friend in? How brave are these men? How wonderful and caring? I will love them all for that for the rest of my days - I just wish they knew how much it means to us that they took the time to say goodbye.
It’s all the little things that you don’t think about in everyday life that suddenly become huge. His driving licence, his Army ID, his passport, chequebooks, and hole-in-the-wall cards - all came back with holes punched through them. It all seemed so final, so cruel. Their punching a hole through these things makes him a non-person now. How can this be? How does my son become a punched hole? He used to breathe and laugh, now he is just a hole - a hole in my heart, a hole in my family, a hole in my life, and a hole in a driving licence. Bloody hell.
Debbie, a friend of mine from schooldays in Henley, whose children both went to Chiltern Edge with the boys, said that she could see a change in my face. I know my inside has changed, but I’m not sure about the outside. Do I look older - I’m nearly fifty now. Am I paler, more drawn? Are these the changes she sees?
I don’t want to look in the mirror - it’s too honest. Looking at my own image is torturous because I know he will never see it again. My reflection only compounds the truth. Never again will my eyes see his face, my mouth feel the softness of his cheek or form words of love, and smile at the sound of his voice. Spiteful pain has taken everything from me, right down to being able to look at my own face.
All I see is him; the shared freckles across skin that is fair but has a sun-kissed blush. Even though he shaved, as the Army insisted on it, his face was smooth and child-like in its softness. It never acquired that ‘rugged look’. I see our almond-shaped eyes - his so expressive. I could tell immediately how he felt, if he was angry, sad, drunk or happy - they spoke volumes. The paleness of our eyelashes - but his so long most women would kill for them; the arch of our lips. It has dulled my vision. I look but I’m not truly there - only the ghost of a child and the wasteland of my soul, a blurred reflection of the mother I once was. There are just shapes and colours, snatched at with furtive side-long glances, as to look openly would be too hurtful, too cruel, and too much a reminder of what I no longer possess. He will never gaze upon my face, and watch time change the lines, deepening some and softening others. That realisation becomes too personal even for me. His death has taken this from both of us.
Some people go grey overnight. I’ve just gone grey inside. Some people’s hair falls out. I’m falling out of control. I worry that Zac and Steely will feel pushed out by my grief. I don’t want them to think that I think only of Cyrus all the time - because that’s not true. I can’t stop thinking about him, but I think of them too. I know that I need to surround myself by the living, but leaving the dead behind is not an option right now.
I love my children differently. I always have, because they are different people, and deserve to be treated differently. I don’t love any one child more than the other. I love them all equally, but I’m frightened they might not see it that way at the moment.
How can a parent love one above the other? If I decided to end it all tonight, surely that would signal to them that I loved them less - that their lives were insignificant in comparison - and that is not the case. That would be the ultimate betrayal of a mother’s love, to love one more than another. I’m not that sort of person, not that sort of mother, not that sort of partner to Rob. They deserve all of me, and that is exactly what they will get until the day I die.
How is it that you can love someone who is no longer here? How is it possible to have that love? I have no control over this feeling of love. I understand ‘falling in love’ - but this is a different love. Yes, I fell in love with my children as they were born, so I guess there is no reason not to still have that rush of love, no matter how crippling, when they die. It is the power of this love that is so frightening.
I wish I
were the sort of person who kept a diary. It would certainly make writing this much easier. I would be able to make sense of the days - put them into some sort of chronological order - but I’m not, and so this appears disjointed, which I find frustrating. I would like it to read smoothly and make sense, but it seems to jump all over the place, and I confuse myself re-reading it. Everything jumps, one thought to another, reliving all the horror of what has happened - jumping from one time to another, and not being able to differentiate between them.
Someone told me that it was natural for everything to seem so all over the place. Believe me, there is nothing natural about any of this. It is the most unnatural thing that I have ever experienced, and that’s scary. I’m used to having some sort of control of my life, but now there is no control. I can’t gauge how I’m going to feel or respond to people when they ask how I am.
Will I forget what he smelt like? Will I forget the feel of the pressure of his hug? The sound of his voice? I hope not, but I know time makes you forget. I never want to forget any of these things, and yet I don’t really want to remember the pain - but they have to go hand in hand.
You can look at a photograph and know who that person was but you can’t feel what they were like by looking at it - and that’s what I’m worried I will lose with time. I don’t want to lose the essence of him, and yet that is what this agony is all about- his essence that is now under six feet of orange earth and pots of colourful flowers and flickering candles.