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

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One entry mentions how they couldn’t write the diary on specific days due to a lot of nursing interventions, but that they were so happy and pleased for him in his recovery so far.

In Getting Better, he shares his story and the lessons he has learned along the way. Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played, Michael investigates the road to recovery, asking how we can find it within ourselves to live well again after - or even during - the darkest times of our lives. Getting Better: Stories of Trauma and Recovery is the landmark new memoir from National Treasure Michael Rosen. Following on from the Sunday Times bestselling Many Different Kinds of Love, Michael explores the role of trauma – from chronic illness to the loss of a child – and asks how we can learn to live again in the aftermath of tragedy. 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. There is no fix, but he details the slow process of finding a voice that allows him to talk about Eddie, aided by a child asking him a question about his son at a talk. He subsequently wrote about the experience in Sad Book (2004), illustrated by Quentin Blake. More than 20 years on, he finds that Eddie is “there, he’s in me, he’s around me … Is he ‘at rest’ in me and with me? Yes, I think it’s something like that.” I’ll give myself a mark, shall I?” he says. “Right, fair enough. No, I think this is quite a good thing to do actually. Like they did at the Beeb. Every now and then you have to do a little…”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. It has now been 23 years since Eddie’s death. For the most part, Rosen has succeeded in escaping incapacitation. “I’ve tried not to be burdened by it,” he says. “I talk in the book about ‘carrying the elephant’.” Rosen hands me a postcard replica of an engraving of a man struggling to carry an elephant up a hill. “I bought that in Paris,” he goes on, “and it’s a great reminder. You know, I’m not carrying an elephant. At the time I thought I was. Eddie’s dead and I’m carrying all this grief and it’s bigger than me – it’s as big as an elephant. But not any more. Even with this Covid thing, or with any of that other stuff, I’m still not carrying an elephant. So this picture, it inspires me.”

In Getting Better, Rosen describes the moment he discovered a photograph of a baby boy sitting on his mother’s knee. When he asked his father who the boy was, Rosen or his older brother, Brian, his father said neither – that it was a third son, Alan, who had died as an infant, before Rosen was born. Rosen was 10 at the time. Nobody in his family had spoken of Alan previously, there were no photographs of him in the house. And though Rosen’s father, Harold, mentioned Alan from time to time over the course of his life, Rosen never spoke about him with his mother, Connie. I guess I have sad thoughts every day. But I try not to be overcome by them’: Michael Rosen. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer The result was 58% (oxygen saturation levels between 95-100% are considered normal). Shortly after this, Michael was admitted to hospital with COVID-19. In Getting Better, he shares his story and the lessons he has learned along the way. Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played in his own life, Michael investigates the road to recovery, asking how we can find it within ourselves to live well again after – or even during – the darkest times of our lives. Moving and insightful, Getting Better is an essential companion for anyone who has loved and lost, or struggled and survived.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. He points to a cardboard box on which is scrawled the word HELMET, and I wonder what else of Eddie might be crammed into this den, out of sight. What followed was months on the wards. He was put into an induced coma for 40 days, and then underwent weeks of rehab and recovery. We welcome national treasure Michael Rosen onto the podcast this week to share some beautiful, witty and thoughtful reflections from his new memoir, Getting Better. Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played in his own life, Michael investigates the road to recovery, asking how we can find it within ourselves to live well again after—or even during—the darkest times of our lives. Moving and insightful, Getting Better is an essential companion for anyone who has loved and lost, or struggled and survived.