Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it

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In Rosen’s thinking, talking about it, writing about it – it all helps. (Expel the ping-pong ball and regain agency!) Though in some ways his mother’s approach lingers in him. Eddie is buried in Highgate Cemetery, but Rosen doesn’t visit the grave. And he finds it troubling to watch videos of his son. “He did drama in the sixth form,” Rosen says near the end of our conversation, “and he’s in a video of one of the plays he wrote. I’ve never looked at it. I don’t think I can. He was wearing a helmet. It’s in that box.”

As documented in this book, he’s been through a lot: a chronic illness, the loss of a child, and his own brush with death, and whilst that has had a huge effect on him, this book shows that, whilst it may not be easy, these things don’t have to define your life, and you can find the positives amongst them.In a moment of desperation, as she watched “the shadow of death” cross his face, his wife took a reading of his oxygen levels on equipment she’d loaned from a neighbour who was a GP. In our lives, terrible things may happen. Michael Rosen has grieved the loss of a child, lived with debilitating chronic illness, and faced death itself when seriously unwell in hospital. In spite of this he has survived, and has even learned to find joy in life in the aftermath of tragedy.

This is a book about surviving. For Rosen, that invariably involves writing, to process his thoughts and emotions. Through a mixture of reminiscences and lessons, he also shows us “getting better” as running, as taking pills, as self-improvement, as something you cannot do on your own, as joy; and even as stuffing difficult feelings into a box when necessary. Rosen never imposes answers on us: “We can watch what others do, listen to what people say, but in the end we have to make it work for whoever we are and whatever life situation we’re in.” They talk about the talking cure. Well, there is a sort of doing cure, too.’ The photo of Rosen’s son Eddie, who died unexpectedly in 1999, at the age of just 18. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer When I ask Rosen if he would have written this book had he not almost lost his life to Covid, he says, “Probably not. No.” Becoming perilously unwell – “poorly,” as the doctors described it, as though he had a mild cold – has brought to the surface several other troubling periods in his life. “Freud’s got a word for it,” he says. “What does he call it – condensation? When one thing happens and you pour into it all your feelings from other places?” As Rosen was feeling “sad about being ill and being feeble it sort of drew in, like a vacuum cleaner, all this other stuff.” In Getting Better, Rosen implies that coping is an everyday practice – we are coping even when we are unaware we are coping, and perhaps especially in those moments. Partway through our conversation I ask Rosen, “How have you coped?” hoping he might share some strategies, though he misunderstands the question.

The subtitle of the book is 'life lessons on going under, getting over it and getting through it', which reminds me of the refrain in We're going on a Bear Hunt. 'Can't go around it Can't go over it Can't go under it We have to go through it.' Michael Rosen has got through lots of crises in his life including the death of his parents, his son, jobs and a close shave with death with Covid. He also had a long-term illness for over a decade without realising it and Jewish relatives who he discovered died in Nazi concentration camps. Their memories he unearthed from the fragments available to him to make sure they were not forgotten.

Michael Rosen is one of the best-known figures in the children’s book world. He is renowned for his work as a poet, performer, broadcaster and scriptwriter. He opened his speech by remarking that it was a great honour to be speaking to nursing staff and thanked them for saving his life. He read some of the diary entries. Dear diary Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played in his own life, Rosen looks at the road to recovery, asking how we can find it within ourselves to live well again after – even during – the darkest times. No,” he says. “It’s different. Sometimes he’s wearing clothes I’ve forgotten about, so I wake up and go, ‘Oh my God, I remember that shirt!’”I notice on Rosen’s desk an unframed photograph of a young man. Rosen swivels to look. “That’s him,” he says, “not all that long before he died.” Throughout it all, a patient diary was kept by the nursing staff caring for him, where they wrote notes about his health, recovery, and their hopes for him to get better.