Chin Up, Head Down

by Helena Tym

  He is the way he is, and nothing will change that, but he has over many years drip-fed me snide remarks and said hurtful things, that make my relationship with him verge on the impossible. He changes the rules to suit himself, so it’s ‘be damned if you do, and be damned if you don’t’. As parents, Rob and I instilled in the boys good manners - they cost nothing to give, but can make one’s life run much more smoothly. When they were little and Rob’s dad gave them sweets or a pound coin, and they said, ‘thank you’, the reply would be, ‘You don’t need to thank me for anything.’ But woe-betide them if they forgot that ‘thank you’ - they would be branded ‘rude and spoilt’.

  Equally, praise is non-existent. When Zac was about three years old and first started nursery school, we encouraged him to go and tell his grandfather what he had learnt. So he said, ‘Grandad, I can say my alphabet.’ Rob’s dad’s only comment was, ‘Yes, but can you say it backwards?’ Zac, at twenty-one, still cannot say the alphabet backwards, but even if he could, he knows his grandfather’s remark would probably be, ‘Yes, but do you know the Chinese alphabet?’

  The boys found his manner confusing and difficult to understand, and so over the years they stopped trying to engage him in conversation, or tell him about their lives. They struggled to have a good and meaningful relationship with him. It is a great pity, an opportunity lost.

  However, Rob’s sense of love and devotion goes deeper than simply something between father and son. He is fiercely loyal to his dad, no matter how frustrating his behaviour is, almost as though their roles have been reversed. He will not allow his dad’s strange and difficult ways to tarnish what relationship they have, and many a time he has been the peace-maker. I am far less tolerant, and I simply cannot understand his father’s dismissive and often damning behaviour, but it is one of the many attributes that I love about Rob - his devotion and sense of duty - even if I sometimes feel it is misplaced.

  Grief is selfish, but our grief is more so than others’ because he was our son and our pain is so much greater, darker, lonelier and all-consuming. Well, not really, but this is how it feels.

  His dad cried, wished he had been in Lyneham, and said he felt he’d ‘missed out.’ ‘No. Only when you have lost your son can you say you have missed out,’ shouted Rob. His dad cried again - he doesn’t really understand. He has never understood; he was not the same sort of parent as Rob. He will never understand the substance that binds us together or the glue that strangles us all at the same time. Maybe it’s more like spider webs that are covered in glue. Sticky, invisible, always catching you when you least expect it, hiding in the corners ready to envelop us all.

  We left after a couple of hours. There was nothing left to say, no more wondering what to talk about, no more wishing we were a million miles away. It needed to be done - duty and some sort of sense of love - but it was very hard. Rob’s father and step-mother are old now, older than before. Looking at them, knowing they don’t understand and never will should, I suppose, make me feel more sympathetic towards them - but it doesn’t. They have their own grief, but some of that is borne of guilt. We are sorry for them, they so sorry for us - but sorry means nothing - so what is the point? There seems no time to stop and breathe - which is a good thing, as time lets you think. I don’t want to think, it’s all too new, too bleak and brutal.

  Steely is playing drums in a band this evening. The band is being graded by their college tutors as part of their first year’s final exams. He was racked with self-doubt. Would he be able to do this? Should he be doing this so soon - was it disrespectful? Would people judge him as uncaring? He knew he could never let anyone down, though, so he pushed through it. Rob, Zac and I went to watch and support him. I know what he is like - he stood tall he was doing this for Cyrus.

  The ‘grapevine’ had been at work and the venue soon became awash with the boys’ friends - young people drawn together to show their love and solidarity with Steely, and their pain at our loss. Rob moved through them during the evening, telling them that tonight we were here for Steely but that we would have a time for Cyrus the next day in our garden. ‘Come about 1 pm and we will have a chance to talk then, and toast him properly,’ he said.

  Steely played; the band was good and I watched him with an overwhelming sense of love and pride. Oh God. Cyrus, I wish you could see your little brother.

  My mother came down from Cambridge the next morning - Sunday; again someone who has guilt, but no glue. She brought a painting with her, wrapped in brown paper and string. It was one of an avocet that Cyrus would have inherited from her. Opening the door and seeing her standing there, I could feel myself shut down. The strain of our relationship over the past few years had finally taken its toll. I don’t think it will ever recover; it’s all too late and meaningless.

  My mother, like Rob’s dad, had little to do with the boys’ lives. She was busy with a career and the social life she had built for herself in Cambridge. I know that parents differ in the ways they bring their children up, but sometimes it’s the small things that are not done, that hurt so much.

  When Zac was born, Rob and I were naturally thrilled; our first child a boy with fair hair, blue eyes. I assumed that she, as a grandparent, would be equally thrilled. He was six weeks old before she found the time to travel from Cambridge to Reading. I was so terribly hurt by her lack of interest, and perhaps that established the slippery slope we have now found our relationship on.

  Yes, grief is selfish - but then so are people. Pain on pain is not helpful when dealing with glue - or am I just being spiteful because of this pain? No, many things have been done and not done, things that cannot be forgiven and now can never be repaired. That is another sadness I now bear.

  She left just before the first of the boys’ friends arrived. Zac, Sharpie and Steely had been to get food, plastic cups and bottles of Sambuca. As the afternoon wore on, more and more people arrived, our back garden littered with groups of young people, friends the boys have shared through their lives.

  Ever since we moved to this house just ten days before Steely was born, our garden has been its focal point. The semi-detached 1950s house sits almost centrally in a 350-foot plot, set back on a narrow stretch of road, which is divided from the main road by a wide verge and trees. When we first moved in the garden was a bramble-filled wasteland. The house had been vacant for eighteen months, and the council had come in with its ‘slash and burn’ policy, leaving only a few plum trees, the odd rose and hundreds of nettles and brambles. Almost the first job Rob did was to build the boys a treehouse in a plum tree at the top of the garden. He planted some conifers to give the area a more secret feel. Sometimes, when the boys were a little older, and felt brave enough, they would spend the night in the treehouse, curled up in sleeping bags with Haribo sweets and plastic swords.

  Slowly the garden took shape, flowerbeds were formed and planted with rhododendrons and bluebells, and ferns and lilies that were trampled accidentally and damaged by games of football. Cyrus and Steely were mad about the game, both involved in football teams as players and fans - Manchester United their club, like Rob. Zac would join in but he was always the one to kick the ball over the fences or break my shrubs. Even though he was never that interested in football, and still isn’t, he would join in, never one to shirk out if there is a game and a laugh to be had.

  Camouflage netting, woven into trees and across the top of the wooden bike-shed, provided cover for their army games. Ropes and pulleys were set from the loft windows to the bottom of the long front drive, and Action Men were dispatched, some with fire-crackers attached to them, the winner being the one whose man made it to the bottom or lost the fewest limbs, these often being the only time they really used the front garden to play in.

  An above-ground swimming pool appeared one hot summer. It was more like vegetable soup than water with the number of children in it, but they loved it, shrieking with laughter as Rob’s
pot-holing wetsuits were used on those less sunny days. Cyrus was so skinny he looked like a piece of liquorice from a sherbet dib-dab. He was always the first to turn blue, even with the protection of the Neoprene suit, and needed a hot bath to de-frost. Extraordinary to think he joined the Army, training in some of the coldest places in the UK, and loved every minute of it.

  After a couple of summers the games became too rough and the sides of the pool split, creating a huge wave that rushed down the back steps, subsiding just before it reached the back door, leaving a round barren patch where nothing would grow. The following year a trampoline took the pool’s place, this too providing many hours of entertainment, children pinging off in different directions, with remarkably the only major casualty being the trampoline itself. Still, with thirteen kids all jumping on it at one time, it was hardly surprising it snapped shut on them like a Venus fly-trap. All this was a reflection of the childhood Rob wished he himself could have had - nothing brought him more pleasure than seeing the boys and their friends having fun.

  As the boys’ needs changed, Rob gave up his garage, deciding that building materials were better stored at the builder’s merchants. He put up a stud wall, creating a separate toilet; carpet tiles went down on the concrete floor, and a television, an old stereo and sofa were installed. The boys and their friends now had a warm, dry place to meet. The breeze-block walls were painted white, and over the years have become covered in graffiti, photo-collages, song lyrics, poems and drawings, all of their friends contributing to the décor. When Steely got his first drum kit, it too found a home there. The garage gave them somewhere to be, other than on street corners or down by the river.

  By the time Zac was fourteen he was smoking cigarettes, and our attitude was; better we know and he smokes here, rather than sneaking off and doing it behind our backs. Cyrus soon joined him, both in the smoking and being in the garage. He had tried hanging around on street corners but got cold and wet, and eventually decided he was better off in the comfort of the garage.

  The boys bought themselves Play Stations and games with money they’d saved from doing morning paper-rounds - something they all started at the age of twelve, getting up early no matter what the weather because, as Rob said, ‘You will never have an easier job than pushing papers through peoples’ letter-boxes.’ Hours of Pro-football, fantasy adventures and racing games were played in the garage. Some nights there were over twenty of them in there, music blaring, shouting, singing and laughing. Fortunately, we have understanding and forgiving neighbours. Their friends became part of our family.

  I can only remember one fight, and that was between two of their friends when too much beer had been consumed. The boys didn’t really fight when they were children - they often argued, but there was rarely blood drawn. Cyrus would always have to have the last word, which frequently got him into trouble with Rob and me, and I’m sure that Steely, as the youngest, was pushed about and dominated by him - so that he was completely clear as to his place in the pecking order. Steely adored him - and no-one else was allowed to push his little brother around; he was fiercely protective of him and would have come down very hard on anyone who tried.

  So, that Sunday afternoon once again all were welcomed. We needed them; they needed us. They sat quietly talking, crying, reminiscing. Wandering through them I was touched by the stories I overheard - stories of Cyrus, and how he had always managed to find time for each of them when home on leave, stories of antics at school, long evenings spent here in our converted garage, impromptu ‘gatherings’ in the garden - so many good times. The boys are well loved by their friends, and Rob and I are always included, treated with respect and friendship by them all - I know how much they will all miss him.

  We already know we won’t have a wake, now is the time to celebrate his life - while we have the energy and his friends have the need. So Cyrus’s iPod was put on shuffle and his eclectic taste in music filled the air - many smiled at memories the music evoked. Then a song I was vaguely familiar with, brought a complete hush from those within earshot. Rob was sitting on a low wall by one of the ponds, and only the sound of the waterfall interrupted. It was ‘If I could turn back the hands of time’ by R. Kelly - unbelievable - and the song took everyone’s breath away, making every track after seem somehow insignificant.

  A toast with Sambuca, four bottles gone in an instant - over 75 plastic shot glasses, filled with the drink Cyrus loved, shared with Zac and Rob every time he was home - it too will always hold memories; I don’t think any of us can drink it without him cascading into our minds.

  At 10 pm, exhausted, we pushed the last of them out of the gate and down the driveway. Clearing up Rob put the iPod on again, asking Zac to find the R. Kelly track. Over and over, long after the leftover food was thrown away and the bottles and tins put into plastic bags, the track repeated itself. It was that evening we decided this piece of music would be played at his funeral.

  I don’t want to look at flowers or cards any more, but they keep arriving. I know that people mean well, but they don’t understand. I don’t understand, so I don’t know why I think they should. Lilies used to remind me of birth - Zac’s birth, and those happy days when the world was rosy and I was naïve. Now they remind me of death and yet I love them still - am I mad?

  Hours turn into days, but I’m not sure when these start or finish. Nothing is clear any more - days, hours, minutes all merge in and out of each other. Flowers and cards - I don’t want any more fucking flowers.

  How do I deal with the anger of a seventeen-year-old and the loneliness of a twenty-one-year old? I know that we all have to travel along this path at our own speeds, but trying to explain and come to terms with it is exhausting. At seventeen, Steely wants to move on and away from the pain, Zac wants to stay but needs the pain to go - or at least know when it will go. That is an answer I just don’t have. I don’t know the best way to deal with this grief. I cannot be angry because I don’t know who to be angry with, but I understand the frustration that Steely feels. He needs to move on and feels that by showing he is sad makes it take longer - and is not what Cyrus would have wanted.

  I know what Cyrus would have wanted, but he can’t have it yet. It is all still too soon, festering in our minds and hearts. He would have hated the thought of our pain and the fact that he is the cause of it, and yet that’s not what he ever thought would happen. He didn’t go out there to die. He went out there to fulfil his dream and come home. He did fulfil his dream, but unfortunately he left us here wishing his dream hadn’t had to come at such a price.

  He has gone and left us behind, trying to make sense of what has happened - trying to come to terms with the impossible. He has left a huge, gaping hole that will never be filled and I don’t think any of us really want it to be filled - just not there in the first place.

  I will always have three sons. I just wish it hadn’t been that one was only borrowed for such a short time. I need my three sons and my man. I don’t think I had ever really needed anything before this - not true need in this sense. This has fused Rob and I together, our souls interwoven with love for each other and a pain shared. I want to go back, to start again but to have a different ending. But then I suppose to start again would still lead to this place, because I wouldn’t change a second of any of the things that went before. To do that would be to change us and I don’t want to do that. I just want a different ending.

  Letters came too, not just cards. Some meant more than others.

  Dear Rob and Helena,

  My name is Paul Mervis and I was Cyrus’s Platoon Commander in 2 Rifles. I was very close with Cyrus and he asked me before we left that if anything were to happen to him that he would like me to speak to you. Unfortunately I am not back until the beginning of July and our grief must remain with us here. I just wanted to write to you to express mine and the Platoon’s deep sorrow at the passing of your much beloved son.

  Ri
ght now, I feel like a part of me has been removed. I know that some of the men are absolutely devastated. If this is how we feel I can only begin to appreciate the pain that you must be going through. Cyrus was such a special boy. I remember the first interview that I had with him when he joined the Battalion. He was so shy but spoke to me with a maturity far greater than all the other young men that would sit at the other side of my desk. I still have it written in my notes - he just wanted to be a good Rifleman, not the RSM or join the SAS. Little did I know what a huge part of our lives he would become.

  The first time I really got to know Thatch was on the exercise in Salisbury Plain where he won the valour award and was sent skydiving. That was the first time I learned about all his fears, which remarkably included the robin redbreast, perhaps one of the most inoffensive of birds. When he told me about his fear of flying, I could think of no one better to be thrown out of a plane. In reality, whatever phased Thatch, he would overcome with an understated courage. It was seen when he sky dived but I saw it every day in Afghanistan, I could have asked him to do anything. He was a brave, courageous man.

  Thatch used to frustrate me because he was so intelligent. Whenever someone comes across my desk who has the potential to take his academic abilities further I always try to persuade them to get qualifications through the army. Thatch would stand before you sparkling with natural intellect, in the way he analysed events or simply just in the way he talked and the way no one could win a ripping session with him. He just told me flat out that if he wanted to continue his education he would have stayed at school. That was that. No matter how hard I tried, when Thatch was determined there was nothing you could do.