‘My boy’s been dead for seven years. It feels like seven minutes’
HEARTBROKEN Helena Tym still lives with the raw grief of losing her son – seven years after he died in Afghanistan.
Cyrus was just 19 when he was caught in a roadside bomb blast in Helmand Province in 2009.
And Helena’s agony is getting worse as the years go by.
She told how the sight of two Army officers approaching her home as she was about to go to bed stopped her in her tracks.
Speaking to Daily Star Sunday ahead of Remembrance Day today, she said: “I was closing the curtains and I saw them coming up the drive.
“I felt sick to my stomach and knew it was going to be bad news but when they asked to come in I knew he was gone.
“I was in complete and utter shock – nothing made any sense. He was my baby, my child.
“People say parents must expect it if your child is in the Armed Forces but we didn’t.
“We never expected we would have to bury our little boy.”
Yesterday Helena, 55, pictured, husband Robin, 56, and sons Zac, 29, and Steely, 25, attended the Festival of Remembrance in London as guests of the Royal British Legion.
Today they will spend the day at Cyrus’s grave in a military plot near the family home in Reading, ISOBEL DICKINSON Berks, just behind his old primary school.
They will be joined by family, friends and members of his former regiment, 2nd Battalion The Rifles, who will send a bugler to play the Last Post in Cyrus’s memory.
But for Helena the pain of his loss is always present.
She said: “It’s more than seven years for us but it could be seven minutes.
“The grief does not change or go away.
“People think, ‘Oh it’s been some time, they must be feeling better’.
“But with every day that passes it only gets harder because it’s another day since I last saw my son.
“We look the same, we sound the same, but we are all completely different people.
“Grief changes everything, none of us functions the way we used to.
“Days just merge. You wake up in the morning and just have to carry on breathing.”
Helena says she is heartbroken that she was unable to protect her son. She explained: “When my boys were babies I would put plasters on their knees and mop their brows when they were poorly. “But death renders you powerless, and, as a mother, it breaks my heart that I cannot fix it.” Helena, who wrote a book, Chin up, Head Down, in 2012 about coping with grief, said the family has found comfort through the Armed Forces charity SSAFA, which helps bereaved service families. She said: “It’s like a club that no one wants to belong to, but I am so grateful that its there. “After Cyrus died our Army support officer suggested we contact them, and their support over the years has been incredible. “It’s a relief in some ways to be with people who, sadly, know how we feel.” Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory, chief executive of SSAFA, said: “We have learned there are unique circumstances associated with a military death and its aftermath, meaning the grieving process is often more complex. “SSAFA’s bereaved family support groups provide a lifeline for these families.”