Chin Up, Head Down

“Chin Up, Head Down” Helena Tym

This is a journey of a wife and mother through the first 18 months of life after her beloved middle son was killed by an IED in Afghanistan.  She takes us through her life is like dealing with the “glue” that has engulfed her, her family and friends, and then continues to engulf yet more families.
  She tells how  she sets up a face for the world and to some extent for her remaining two sons. She wishes for them to grow and blossom but knows there will always be the loss of what might have been. We see the almost jealous possessiveness of the grief yet wishing beyond wish not to have it at all.  She throws open the doors to her inner self, to the pain, anger, the mixed feelings towards others and their pain. The utter tenderness when confronted with the tears of an 8 year old girl who had been promised by her son, Cyrus, that he would come back to marry her.

How can all this happen to an ordinary person? How can an ordinary person continue to be? How much can the human body take she asks her GP – a surprising amount it would seem.

The tenderness and love is in every word. So too is the heartache. She grew a new heart for each child and now, no matter how much her other hearts grow, one heart will be stunted. In an echo almost,  of the Sylvia Plath poem “Three women” “What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love?” Helena says “Never again will my eyes see his face, my mouth feel the softness of his cheek or form words of love, and smile at his voice.” Such a stark reversal.

The Army and its forms, ceremonies, remembrances are lived through. To some extent they give comfort in that they acknowledge Cyrus and what he was doing and his bravery. Helena and the family meet Cyrus’s Army family, the people he affected and who knew him during his two years. But at the same time these formalities are like flimsy tissue trying to cover a gaping hole.

There are some lovely warm memories of life before 2nd June 2009. These are illustrated by a small selection of personal photos in the middle of the book.

The whole book is very easy to read, well written like a conversation. There is a real sense of the weight that is borne, the surprise, the dislocation, the madness, the fervent wishing for a different story.

The book also contains Cyrus’s last letters to his parents and brothers. These are truly beautiful, mature pieces of literature. They have been performed in Shaftesbury Avenue, at the Edinburgh Fringe and featured in papers and magazines. They give us a tiny hint of the calibre of the man that has been lost to the world.

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