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

Rosen, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1529148901 ISBN 13: 9781529148909

Verlag: Ebury Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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.

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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 visits schools with his one-man show to enthuse children with his passion for books and poetry. In 2007 he was appointed Children's Laureate, a role which he held until 2009. While Laureate, he set up The Roald Dahl Funny Prize. He currently lives in London with his wife and children.

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I'll start by telling you a story. I’m telling it to you so you know what happened. I’m also telling it to you because it helps me to tell it. And because it helps me, I am saying that if anything like this has happened to you, it may well help you to do the same: to tell your story. You can do this in any way you like. The important thing is to tell it.

The story begins at Paddington Station in 1999. From there, I ring home to see if my son Eddie is in. He’s nearly 19. Sometimes he’s there and sometimes he stays with his girlfriend. If he’s not there, I might go and visit someone else. If he is there, I’ll go home and we can have a chat.

It turns out that he is at home. But he’s not feeling too good, he says. A bit of a headache. I tell him to take some paracetamol and I’ll be home in about an hour. Sure enough, I’m home in about an hour. He doesn’t seem too bad. Must be one of those things my mother used to call “a chill”, I think. I tell him that I’ve worked a thing into my show for children where I tell them a story about when he was a funny, naughty toddler, then, I say, I follow it with a story about how he grew and grew and grew until, as he is now, he became bigger than me. And something else: now he can pick me up and whirl me round and round until I shout, “Put me down, Eddie! Put me down, Eddie!” It works. To little children, as I mime the contrast between chasing after the naughty little toddler Eddie and being swung through the air by the giant Eddie, it seems miraculous that one day they could be bigger than me. I think it’s a miracle too. Eddie seems to enjoy the story.

He doesn’t go to bed. We sit in the living room. He’s written a play and we talk about how we could get some people together to do a kind of acted-out reading. He stretches out on the sofa – he really is bigger than me – and says that he feels a bit weird. I feel his head. It’s hot. I remind him that he can alternate between paracetamol and ibuprofen and line up the boxes for him, warning him not to overdo the dose.

He says he’s going to bed now, but he’ll have some ice-cream first. I ask him if his neck is stiff. It’s something I’ve done with the children for the previous few years since meningitis has come up on the radar. No, he says, he doesn’t have a stiff neck.

Someone’s sent me a book of riddles that’s just come out. I’ve got it because a riddle I’ve written is in the book. I read it to him. He gets it. It’s daft. The answer, he says, is “your bum”. Those are the last words that I ever heard him say.

When I go to bed, I put my head round the door. He’s lying on his back in bed. “You OK?” I ask. He nods without making a sound. I check that he’s got the paracetamol, ibuprofen and a glass of water by his bed and then I go to my room and turn in.

In the night, I hear him get up and go to the loo. I have a feeling of irritation that I’m awake. I’ve got to get up early and I don’t want to feel tired. I fall back asleep.

I’ve got to get on the road pretty early so I’m up at six. I pop my head round the door to check how he’s been in the night. “I’ve got to go, Edz,” I say. “I know it’s early.” I remind him to double-lock the door on his way out. He doesn’t answer. I feel his head. It’s cold. He’s still. Unnervingly still. I nudge him. He feels like a rock. There’s no movement, no life. I know – but don’t know – that he’s dead. I shake him, shouting out to him, “Eddie! Eddie!” There’s no reply. I rush to get the phone, ring 999, ask for “Ambulance”. I describe what’s happened.

“Pull him out of the bed,” the voice says, “pull him on to the floor, lie him on his side.”

I grab hold of him, and do what I’m told. It’s hard. He weighs more than me. As I pull him, I see that his arm is stiff, at an angle, as if it’s in a plaster without any plaster on it. His armpit has strange red stripes. I get him on to the floor, and when I lie him on his side, a bit of pale red fluid comes out of his mouth on to the carpet.

I get back on the phone, I tell them what I’ve done and what I’ve seen.

The voice says, “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I’m alone with Eddie in the room. I think he’s dead. I know he’s dead. I think that the ambulance people will come and they’ll do something that will make him come alive.

I don’t remember the next few minutes. I remember at one point thinking or saying, “Why have you done this, Eddie?” as if he had done this thing to me. I’m almost ashamed to admit it, though. Why or how could I have thought at that moment that I was in any way involved in him getting whatever it was that had killed him? I guess it’s part of how we see the death of those we love: we see them withdrawing their love from us. If ever, in our past, people withdrew their love from us as some kind of punishment, then someone dying can feel like that too.

The ambulance people call, I let them in, they dash upstairs, their bulky uniforms filling the space. They kneel over Eddie, and in a few seconds, one of them says, “He’s dead.”

It emerges that what’s killed him is meningitis, or to be more precise, meningococcal septicaemia. I think of the posters I’ve seen at the GP surgery. Headache, fever, stiff neck, sickness, rash – do the test to see if the rash stays even when you press it with a glass. He had no rash, I say to myself. I didn’t see a rash. He didn’t see a rash. People fill the house, turning up with food and cards. We try to comfort each other. They sit and talk.

How do you get better from something as total and as devastating as this? If I can magnify the pain once more, I’ll say this: Eddie had become one of those people in a family who is a pivot. There are different parts to a “blended” family or “network” family (siblings with different mothers or fathers), so one sibling might not link up with another part very closely. There may be ways in which one sibling chafes against another. Eddie had stood at some centre point where all the siblings pivoted around him. He was the one person equally beloved of all of them. He could sit on the sofa between two who were angry with each other and they would each be happy to snuggle up with him and joke with him. I had thought it was magical. I didn’t know how he did it. I cherished it more than anything else in the world. And now there was a hole. There was a gap on the sofa. How would I cope with it?

What follows is not a menu. It’s not a prescription. I know better than many that being told how to mourn is one of the most irritating things in the world. We each have to find our own ways of doing it. 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. And there’s another thing: by making it your own, you have the sense that it’s you doing it, you’re the “agent”. You can take pride in your own ability to do something in the face of the impossible. Just following someone else’s plan won’t do that for you.

So I offer you what I did as a set of things to think about, ignore, adapt, change, or do what you want with. I hope they give you ideas for what you might want to do if you’re faced with loss or grief. Just that.

I spent a long...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ebury Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1529148901
• ISBN 13: 9781529148909
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: The Random House Group Limited; productsafety@penguin.co.uk; ; One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens; London; SW11 7BW; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: The Random House Group Limited; productsafety@penguin.co.uk; ; One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens; London; SW11 7BW; Vereinigtes Königreich