Chapter 16: Once More Poppies and Pain

Here we are again - November and all that goes with that month. I’ve started to wear my poppy pin. Steely has been in Los Angeles for six weeks now. I miss him, Rob misses him, and Zac misses him. The house feels empty, and yet there are still three of us here, moving around each other, touching sometimes and repelling others, like magnets. There is nothing bad in needing our own space and time to be with our own thoughts, but it is comforting to know we are here for each other.

Gun-metal grey: how ironic that that’s the colour of the sky today. The leaves are turning - but not as quickly as I remember in the past, or perhaps I don’t remember things as clearly any more. Grey, damp, windy November - not the nicest of months anyway, but now the malice of dying leaves and withered flowers touches where it went unnoticed before.

A week of engagements, all meant for the best, but all so difficult to carry out without feeling the need to tear my hair out. Putting on our brave faces as people want to see a positive; they can cope with that, while negativity is too destructive and personal.

Chiltern Edge School have raised over £1,000 for 2 Rifles - fantastic - so Rob and I went and collect the cheque, tell them what Remembrance Day means to us and let them know who will benefit from their efforts. I’m not sure they really understand; the only way is to have experienced our loss, and we wouldn’t wish that on them.

Wednesday brought something new: the March for Honour, which has been organised by Lance Corporal Ram Pattern of the Royal Marines, with members from all of the forces marching a mile for each fallen solider from Iraq and Afghanistan since operations began in 2001. He decided he wanted to do something to raise awareness, so the plan to do this sponsored speed-march began.

We met at the Civic Centre in Reading, together with the Lord Lieutenant, several Mayors, the press and, of course, the British Legion. We joined Ram and walked through Broad Street, cheered by shoppers and on-lookers, and met up with others at the Memorial in Forbury Gardens. Eileen Green (Richard’s mother) was there together with Claire, his stepmother. We had been given a wreath by the Legion and Rob, Eileen and I stepped up and placed in on the memorial.

No amount of support or the laying of wreaths makes any of this better. I wish it were that simple, but it is important to keep their memories alive this way, and also to see the support that there is out there for our forces, and for us.

Thursday was Remembrance Day, and we’d been asked by the Reverend of Shiplake College to come and join them for their Remembrance Service, and give a short talk on why we felt Remembrance Day was important. Strange to be asked by the College, as this was who Zac went to Kenya with, and yet the Reverend knew nothing of that connection until we pointed it out over coffee after the service.

It was daunting to stand in front of upwards of two hundred people and talk about anything, let alone about Remembrance Day and Cyrus. I felt that we managed to give them an understanding of what wars mean to those that have lost a loved one. Cyrus was seventeen when he joined up, and several of them in the congregation were that age. It’s all very well talking about the Great Wars, but none of us remembers them, even if we were affected indirectly. This war is so much more available - if that’s the right way of describing it. The internet, the instant news, and mobile phones make this an accessible war - one that we can watch from the comfort of our living rooms. So I tried to explain why it is a war that affects us all today, rather than expecting them to equate themselves to those grainy black and white photos of the hell that was WWI and WWII.

Rob and I went up to Cyrus’s grave for 11 o’clock, and Chris and Claire Green were there for Richard. Chilly (Rob’s most supportive friend) came too, five of us all locked in our own grief. Our thoughts are also with someone else today - Joan Walkling, a little old lady for whom Rob had done odd-jobs and known for over thirty years. She died yesterday after battling cancer for more than five years. She was in her eighties and always used to say she knew she’d had a ‘good innings’, but nevertheless her death was very sad. She had become a huge part of our lives. Zac, Cyrus and Steely had become her surrogate grandchildren and she their surrogate grandmother.

Over the years she had become very dependent on Rob, as even changing light-bulbs and batteries in a bedside clock were tasks she struggled with. She had been a huge support to Rob over the last eighteen months, and they would have done anything for each other. Rob had been to see her at the hospice at 9 o’clock the morning before, and later received a phone call with the news that she had died that lunchtime. He will miss her - she was a true friend.

On Friday we went to Micklands Primary School once again for their assembly, which was given by Ian Tindall about ‘The Poppy’. Listening to Ian talk, I’d not known about half of the things that he told them, but one thing that really struck me was that 1964 is the only year since the end of WWII that no forces were killed on active duty. It now made sense of those sixteen thousand plus names on the memorial at The National Arboretum. How many pebbles thrown into millponds whose ripples have been felt all over the world?

There had been a change of plan for Remembrance Sunday. The Regiment were sending Elliott and Malou over to represent 2 Rifles, and several representatives from 3 Rifles were going to be there for Richard, together with two buglers. I called the Caversham branch of the Legion and explained that we’d not be down at the river with them at the War Memorial, so asked them to please send our apologies to everyone who attended their service. They had been so kind getting Cyrus’s name engraved, and we felt it right to let them know why we wouldn’t be there.

Elliott had arrived on Saturday, driven from London by his mother, and we asked her in to have a cup of tea. It was very hard to watch her as she talked about how he was struggling to come to terms with everything. He would be leaving the Army in January. He had also had another blow - in the early hours of Friday morning two of his friends from school were killed in a car accident. Fucking hell, how much more? There is just nothing I can say.

Zac and Elliott went out for the evening, and eventually crawled into their beds at 5am - not much time to sleep before we had to be at the graveside. Malou arrived to a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich, and my mother arrived too, bringing with her crosses and a wreath from herself and Mione’s family.

Rob and I had already decided that, as we weren’t quite sure how the whole thing was going to work, I would (with the permission of Richard’s family) say a few words and read the Rifleman’s Collect just before 11 am, which would be followed by two minutes’ silence and the sounding of the Last Post and Reveille. I stood between their headstones and read - it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. It’s the ‘Swift and Bold’ that always gets me and then those clear haunting notes from the bugle. Even after hearing it several times the feeling of utter desperation still closes in on me, making it difficult to breathe and concentrate.

We laid wreaths, two families and friends wrapped up against the cold and wrapped up in grief. The Sambuca made an appearance; everyone had a little sip and privately toasted our boys.

Pete Bevan turned up in motorbike leathers with a wreath. Such a nice man, he was a Corporal when he trained Cyrus in Bassingbourn. I don’t know if Pete has lost anyone else he knows in this war, but it was very kind of him to come for Cyrus and to show his support for us. He came back home with us and had a cup of tea before braving the rain and heading back to Abingdon, where he is now stationed. It still surprises me how many people Cyrus touched in his life, and how many people miss him.

So that’s it. Another Remembrance Week come and gone. Exhaustion overwhelms me but sleep is still as evasive as ever, ruined by dreams and a mind that refuses to shut down. Christmas next, I guess. I’ve already planned that we won’t have a tree again; too many memories associated with that ritual, too painful to do, sorry boys - I hope you’ll understand.

People often ask me how I am and that they can’t imagine how I feel. How to describe it? I never sleep through a whole night any more, and when I do sleep I wake in an instant, no warm gentle sleepy awakening, but a sudden heart-stopping wake when I know in a split second that it’s all true. The feeling is almost a hunger, gnawing in the pit of my stomach like stage fright; that butterfly kiss that is so cruel. That moment when my heart breaks all over again. That is what it feels like, all day and every day, with no change over the days and months - no peace, only deep sorrow and the huge feeling of loss that no food, drink or medicine can ever heal. It’s a wound carved into my very being. This is how I feel, so how do I break that to the person asking such a question, without making them feel embarrassed that they asked it in the first place?

In reality, I’d like to tell them to imagine someone who is nearest and dearest to them, and out of the blue they are told that person has been blown to pieces. For an instant this may give them an understanding, but the truth is they will have forgotten that feeling by the time the conversation is over. The difference between us is I am reminded of this every time my brain thinks it can relax for a moment. But I know that’s not what they want to hear, so I just smile and say I’m getting there or I’m ok. But that is just a lie, like my make-up.