Chin Up, Head Down

by Helena Tym

  I asked him how much the human body can cope with and he just listened to my sobs and assured me that, in fact, the human body can deal with massive trauma and is extremely resilient and mine would help to carry me through. It was all I needed to hear, at the end of the day. This is normal, my new normal. I will survive this ordeal.

  The charity SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association) is a group we have become a part of, although it has taken over a year for us to feel able to face families in a similar situation. Their Bereaved Families Support Group organises weekends where we, as the bereaved, can get away and feel the pressure of pretence slip away for a few hours. It is a relief to be able to relax, knowing that no-one is questioning the way you feel, whether you laugh or cry; we all have the same pain, and we all understand the agony of loss.

  Rob and I attended our first SSAFA weekend in December, when we were invited to London to attend Evensong at Westminster Abbey. We travelled up by train and, after meeting with some of the other families, we walked from the hotel to the Abbey through the snow.

  Rob and I were shown to our seats, which were in the pews with the choir. When they started to sing I was covered in goosebumps with the sheer power and beauty of their voices. It was an amazing experience.

  After the Evensong finished, the Abbey was closed to the public and we were split into small groups and given a private tour, followed by a short ceremony and prayers around the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was both incredibly moving and desperately sad.

  Back at the hotel we met for dinner and spent the evening swapping stories of our soldier-sons and how we were just managing to get through each day.

  There are no tools that I can use to help - no tools can bring him or my old life back, or make me feel able to be a normal person again. Coping tools can’t undo what has been done. I know that they help a lot of people - brothers and sisters who will go on to have lives of their own - but mothers and fathers are broken for ever, as their future is now not what it should have been. Our futures were mapped out, but now a piece is missing and you can’t read the map any more. My future was my children - it still is, but one has gone so it’s not the same future.

  I want Zac and Steely to go on and have their own families, and I want to be part of them but it still doesn’t alter the fact that there is one missing. I don’t want them to think that I don’t care about them - how they feel, who they are, who they want to be. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and we could all go back to before this happened - that it had never happened.

  The stinging starts at the back of my eyes. My throat goes dry and swallowing becomes difficult. Suddenly I can’t breathe properly and my sight is blurred by tears. That’s what happens every day. Sometimes I have to go into the downstairs loo or take the dog into the garden just so that no-one can see me cry. I’m not ashamed of crying, but sometimes the time is not right. I paint my face on every morning, and sometimes I use a little help from my make-up bag, but most of the time I just put on my imaginary ‘happy’ face and try and make it through the next twenty-four hours.

  Rob was fifty on 5th February. What a hard day that was, watching him struggle with the whole concept of having a birthday when Cyrus is dead. It was almost suffocating - just another very sad day to add to our list of very sad days. Where do I keep all this sadness? What am I supposed to do with it? I can’t seem to make it turn into anything positive - no helping myself or anyone else.

  I’m not sure if I get pissed off with other people being tearful or if I just don’t know how to deal with it any more. Should I be selfish and say, ‘Well actually, I do mind you crying because I’m not sure who you are crying for. Is it Rob, Zac, Steely and me - or is it for yourself?’ I know how much I miss him, but I’m not sure why others should say they feel the same or know how we feel. I think I’m just mixed up and not sure which way is up any more.

  Work is coming to an end, and to be honest I need it to stop now. I can’t take the stress of trying to deal with other’s problems and having to be smiley and nice all the time. It is just such hard work and I know that sometimes my painted face cracks. People with brain injuries don’t need external worries, so I’m no good for them any more. I’ll miss them, but I need to go.

  The other Saturday I decided to brave the journey to Cambridge. My sister had moved into a new house and had invited Mum and me for lunch. It was nice to see her new house, but to get to there I had to pass signs for Bassingbourn Barracks, where Cyrus had lived and trained for twenty weeks. That was where Rob and I dropped him off, two and a half years ago, at the start of his new life. I hadn’t been in the right frame of mind before I’d left home, and once I’d arrived, having spent two hours in the car on my own and passing the barracks’ signs, I felt it was maybe not such a good idea. I felt even worse and I wanted to turn around and go home - but I was there, so I couldn’t.

  I asked Mum if there was a route I could take to go home that would not go past Bassingbourn, because I found it so upsetting. To my dismay, she expressed surprise that I found it upsetting to drive past the barracks. I suppose Bassingbourn would have no meaning to her; although only fifteen miles from Cambridge, she never acknowledged his being there. It was becoming clear that she would never understand how I feel or be able to offer any support. That hurt, because I then understood that she is unable to be there for me as a mother figure, so I will either have to accept this or walk away. I’m doing my best to accept it, as she has been a part of my life for nearly fifty years. Perhaps it’s just old age and living on your own for too long. I hope I never get like that. I would like to think that my children have always known that they and Rob are the most important things in my life, and that I would do anything to protect and support them - even though I know I’m not the same mother or partner that I was before all this happened. I can’t ever go back to that person. She is lost forever.

  When you touch the antennae of a snail it folds and disappears into itself. That’s how I feel some days. I just want to retreat into the womb and make the world go away. That butterfly feeling in my stomach returns, making me feel sick and fragile all the time. My mother should be my ‘womb’ but that is just a wish; like wishing for things to be different. So, just another wish unfulfilled.

  Chapter 13: Corporal Richard Green

  Another Rifleman from Reading was killed last week in Afghanistan.

  How small this world truly is! We had seen him standing outside the church on the day of Cyrus’s funeral, and I knew he was a soldier, even though he wasn’t in uniform. Standing so tall and proud - they have an air about them. How terrible that he should be killed, exactly nine months after Cyrus.

  Nine; now that’s a hard number. Nine months I carried him, nineteen years I loved him, nurturing him, watching him grow. Nine months since I lost him. Nearly a year since I last saw his eyes open. Where has that time gone? What do I do when I get to that anniversary? I’ll never get to hold him, touch him, talk to him, laugh with him, cry with him. I truly believe that no-one should ever have to feel this pain.

  We’re going to Richard Green’s funeral on Tuesday. I’m not sure if the boys will come, as I know they need to sort things out at their own pace and another funeral in the same church might not be the way to do it. I know that they want to show their respect for Richard - but at what price to themselves?

  I feel sick already, and I’ve not even decided what to wear. Can I wear the same outfit? Will it scald like it did the first time I wore it? How do I go and sit through their pain and not be completely immersed in my own? Am I selfish or is it the natural way of things?

  I didn’t cry in the church when Cyrus’s coffin was there. I only cried when they lowered him into the ground. We’ll not go to the cemetery this time. I can’t look at that open wound in the ground - not again, not even for someone else’s coffin. Too much pain and anguish goes with that. I know I’ll cry when I see Ri
chard’s coffin in the church, but I’m completely aware that my tears will be for Cyrus and the loss we suffer. I also know that wrapped up with those tears will be the pain that I feel for Richard’s friends and family. That ache that never goes, that pain behind eyes I don’t know, those muffled sobs that I heard last June, the agony of losing someone you love and the inability to comprehend what has happened.

  All these feelings and more - I’ve been practising them all weekend; the catch in the throat, the sting in the eye, the nauseating headache that I’ve not managed to shake for over nine months. So close to home and yet...

  They didn’t know each other but their lives were intertwined and now they’ll rest together, with those other young men and women who had a vision and followed it. It’s those of us left behind who have to try to understand that vision and how it all fits together. I don’t think for one moment that they believed they would leave us so soon, or that they had any idea of the broken people they would leave behind.

  I feel like a smashed plate, splintered in a thousand pieces. I wish, like the chemical element mercury, it were possible to pull myself back together - but I suppose that even if I did, there would still be missing pieces making me a shadow of my former self.

  I hate having to pretend. It’s sometimes like a game. I pretend I’m fine and getting on with things, when in reality I’m not. I feel so much worse - that river pulls me down, through darker and darker passages. It’s always so cold. I’m always so cold. I feel as though I’ve lost the ability to feel normal things any more. I laugh, but it’s not me. I talk, but it’s not me. Who is this person sitting at this blank page, putting down words that are confused and hurtful? Who have I become?

  I drink to numb the pain, but it just makes me feel worse. I don’t sleep without dreaming or tossing and turning, trying to get my new skin to fit and feel comfortable. Those sores open up and ooze at night. Evil creeps in and sits in my head. The evil of a life altered, the evil of a family thrust into a world they have no wish to be a part of - the evil of broken everything.

  The other day I read the poems of a self-harmer. How cruel we are to one another. Why, when such dreadful things happen anyway, would we deliberately want to hurt someone we know? Her words rang so true, even though she was writing about something completely different. Her pain at the unjustness of life and others struck a chord. Pain and suffering is shared by so many, and yet we don’t see it - or if we do, we chose to ignore it. Does it make those not in pain feel power? Is the pushing down of others the thing that elevates? Does that elevation make them feel good about themselves? I can’t bear all this pain and yet I can understand the need to inflict it upon oneself, just to release the pressure. The feeling I have of being trapped in a life I can’t move on from is so frightening that I feel that the letting of my blood might possibly ease that feeling of needing to explode.

  We move through this life so selfishly. Children are selfish, old people are selfish - and all those ages in between are too. I want; stamp, stamp. I need; scream, scream. We are so wrapped up in our own selfishness that we don’t see the needs of others. I see and yet I can’t help. Is this because the most dreadful thing has happened - or do I just think I have the power to see because of it? Selfish? I guess I am.

  Richard’s father spoke at the funeral of being an ordinary family that extraordinary things just didn’t happen to. Well, some of us are lucky enough to have extraordinary children (not just those who join the forces) but children who touch people’s lives and make them better people. I have one of those families, and perhaps Richard came from one too.

  They are together now, side by side, soldier-like in the small military plot at the cemetery. It is strange seeing other people’s flowers and words. People we don’t know - but whom I suppose over the coming months we might get to know. I don’t often go up there and meet people but the other day Rob and I went to see Cyrus and Richard too, and there were four of Cyrus’s friends there. Odd - no not odd, just unusual to be there at the same time. The last time I saw anyone since was on Remembrance Sunday I think - but I’m not sure no day has a beginning or an end any more.

  I’m not sure how I feel about it all. We have spent nine months going to visit Cyrus’s grave and it being in the middle on its own. Now Richard is buried no more than two feet from him and even though I know it is right and proper and I have no doubt in my mind that it is exactly where he should be, it seems strange. Two lots of flowers now, two lots of people mourning the death of a loved one. Both Riflemen, both young, both having chosen their paths knowing the risks and still prepared to take them.

  Do I feel slightly resentful? That’s an awful thought, because deep down of course I don’t. I guess I’d just got used to having the place to ourselves. Selfish. How selfish! I didn’t want to have to share this space - but then again, I didn’t want any other family to have to wade through this glue. Now the space is less, there are more flowers again, tributes to a hero, last messages to a loved one. Oh God, this shouldn’t be happening. It opens up those old wounds that had never really healed, but only been covered by others fighting for space in a heart that seems unable to refuse entry.

  I suppose we had got to a point where we reached ‘phase two’. The headstone had gone up and we were just waiting for the turf to go down. Now we have to watch Richard’s flowers fade and someone else will have to make the painful decision of when to throw them away. We will have to watch as the ground sinks. That in itself is an agony, even though you know in your head the coffin is still intact your heart tells you it’s collapsing (which of course it isn’t). Then their phase two will come with the erection of his headstone. I wonder what words they will have inscribed on it. The Rifles emblem will be the same. The K I A (killed in action) is the same - just the date, name, age, rank and personal message will be different. We tried to keep it simple and relevant to anyone civilian or military that wanted to visit and feel that the message was personal to them, I hope it works:

  30011938 Rifleman

  Cyrus Thatcher

  2nd Battalion The Rifles

  2nd June 2009 Aged 19

  K I A in Afghanistan

  Forever in our hearts

  Same glue, same darkness, different family. Sad days to add to the collection I already have. It’s not the sort of treasured collection you pass down to the next generation.

  Another brave young man, who loved his job and was so obviously good at it - he must have been to be only twenty-three, and already a corporal.

  So many things make me cry. The blush of spring flowers in the garden, a song or the tone of a voice on the radio, stroking a dog that I know Cyrus would have loved. Some days all these things just seem to make the pain stronger. I wish I knew how to control it, then I could eke it out in small doses so that I didn’t feel as though I was going to choke on it all the time.

  It sneaks up and hits me from behind; just when I think I’ve had a couple of days without it and that perhaps I’ll make it through a whole week, it bites me, leaving gouges that feel like they’re lined with acid.

  Come and gone the anniversary of the last time I saw him. That was the day of Richard’s funeral. How can a year have gone so fast when so much of it has been filled with the agony of loss? Some days I feel as though I’ve always lived this life of tears and pain. How to explain that to people - and do they really need to know? No, I don’t think so - no-one really wants to know. I guess another metaphor is that my grief is like a spring shower; sudden and heavy but then gone and blue sky all in the space of five minutes. Odd.

  Chapter 14: Hollow Laughter

  Some people manage to channel their grief into the energy to do something positive. I don’t have that energy. I sometimes wish I could immerse myself in helping others who have suffered loss, or experienced the things that soldiers do, but at the moment I can’t. Selfishness raises its ugly head again - selfish but not u
ncaring. I care deeply about the lot of others, but I’m unable to drag myself out of my own self-pity to help them yet. Who knows, I may never be able to do it. There seems so little energy these days - lack of motivation, lack of passion, lack of everything.

  I fear my inability to let go of Zac and Steely. Zac worries about leaving us, and I worry about him worrying. Steely wants to escape, but I need him to need me - all of it destructive perhaps, or natural. I don’t know any more, I’m not in control. How do I let my children move on without making them too scared to do it? What tools do I give them, when I can’t use any of the ones I’ve got? I know the natural course life should take, but our lives have been shunted into another one and I don’t know the way.

  I feel like Gretel, dropping crumbs and hoping they will be there to show me the way back. I know the outcome of dropping those crumbs, but it doesn’t stop me doing it anyway. So much of my life seems to be made up of metaphors, most of which I’m sure have been used before. Perhaps I’ve heard them somewhere, and now I need to use them myself.

  I’ve just finished reading a book called ‘Kisses on a Postcard’ about evacuees during the Second World War. Whole communities were affected by loss, and I wonder if they dealt with it differently - or was it such a common occurrence to lose someone or know someone who had? They seemed to have a resilience I can’t muster. Was it that their lives were so much tougher in the first place, and I’ve been spoilt by modern life - the ‘must have’ society that we seem to live in now? I wish I had some of their grit and determination. I wish I were as tough as my children seem to be.