How I remain positive after lifetime of trauma

DESPITE having experienced more traumas and tragedies than most people, Michael Rosen says he always takes a positive approach.

The author and poet uses what he calls a “bag of tricks”, his way of remembering how he coped with the last catastrophe.

“I can only ever think of positive things really,” says the 77-year-old former Children’s Laureate, bestselling author of We’re Going On A Bear Hunt and covid survivor.

In 2021 he described his covid ordeal and recovery in Many Different Kinds Of Love, a collection of poetry and prose.

In his latest book, Getting Better: Life lessons on going under, getting over it, and getting through it, he reveals how he is faring now as well as charting some of the other devastating events of his life, including discovering the Holocaust horrors suffered by his relatives, his sickly childhood, anti-Semitism recollections and the sudden death of his 18-year-old son, Eddie, in 1999.

He will be talking about the book at a Henley Literary Festival pop-up event later this month.

Michael says trauma surrounded him from early on.

His Jewish parents, who had Polish, Romanian and Russian ancestry, had taken part in the Battle of Cable Street in London in the Thirties, where anti-fascists clashed with Oswald Mosley’s far right Blackshirts.

On the day he was born, the church next door to where his family lived in Pinner, Middlesex, burnt down.

He says: “Mum always said that it burnt down on the night or the morning of May 7, 1946 so I always used to worry whether it was my fault.

“Mum was always sort of ‘ serious’ about it but she was quite a comical person, so I don’t know why she was so serious about it.

“She’d shake her head rather gravely and say, ‘Well, yes, it did’ and you could see the ruins all through my childhood.

“Have I moved on since then? Yes, it’s only 77 years ago, so I like to think I have but my wife Emma doesn’t think I have. It’s one of her gags that I live entirely in the past, usually sort of aged between about four and nine.

“Even more worryingly for her, I spend quite a lot of time doing some family tree stuff, so she says things like, ‘When people ask you questions, Michael, you don’t actually have to go back to 1843’.

“It takes enormous amounts of time just finding out somebody’s name because there’s at least five spellings for every name so suddenly you find that people called Bruchsztajn were called by the Newcastle authorities ‘Brookstone’.

“One relative came through and they saw his name and just gave up and changed it to Hyams.”

Michael, who lives in Muswell Hill in north London, has helped to bring up five children and two stepchildren and has written 140 books. He was Children’s Laureate from 2007 to 2009.

It was the loss of his son Eddie in 1999 that was the most devastating event of his life.

The 18-year-old had gone to bed with flu-like symptoms and died during the night from meningococcal septicaemia.

His father was the last person to see Eddie alive and was also the one who found him dead the next day.

He wrote about how he felt in Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, published in 2004, and has also devoted a chapter to it in his latest book.

He told one interviewer: “There were times when I thought, ‘I don’t want to revisit this’ and then actually writing about it made that easier.

“It may sound odd because it’s so painful, but laying it out in a line in chronological order is very relieving.” Michael went on to meet and marry radio producer Emma-Louise Williams and have two more children and says he relies on positives like this.

He says: “Obviously, you do have things that pull you back and then you have to remind yourself what it is that takes you forward, whether it’s a doing thing or a talking thing or a writing thing or a playing thing.

“You have almost like a bag of tricks and when the thing hits you, you say, ‘Oh, right, how did I get out of that last time? Oh, I remember, I started writing’. ‘Oh, I remember, I went off and watched football’ or ‘Oh, I remember, I went off and did some exercises’.

“So you have this bag of tricks to remind yourself, that’s the way I work it.

“There’s a last page or two in the book called ‘Raisins to be Cheerful’, which actually should’ve been called ‘Rosens to be Cheerful’.

“It’s called that because raisins are one of the things that make me cheerful. I always tell children my name is Michael Raisin.

“Of course some sorrow and some upset is not bad because you learn things in those moments.

“I was watching A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic recently and obviously there’s a man full of regrets and trying to come to terms with how he’d got things wrong and I was thinking of the regrets in my life, like Eddie and so on.

“Then of course it’s very redemptive, the story, in that you watch him suddenly realise that he’s wasting his life because he’s just dwelling on piling up dosh. He sees that everybody hates him and it’s very powerful.

“As I’m sitting there watching it, I’m reflecting on how if you sit there in a state of remorse and regret, it’s okay to be there to think.

“However, if you just stay in it, then all you do is you cut yourself off from other people because they can’t get at your remorse and regret.

“They can only just say, ‘Oh, I’m very sorry’, but then if you’re still in remorse and regret the next day they get a bit tired and you cut yourself off.

“You have to find ways to enjoy things together and you can learn from being within those situations but if you just only stay within them, then that’s tough.”

The author nearly lost his own life in March 2020, the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when he contracted covid-19.

He was in a coma for 40 days, intensive care for 48 and in hospital for three months. At one point his chances of survival were assessed as 50/50.

The two main long-term physical effects are the blurred vision he suffers in his left eye, which he can hardly see out of, and the deafness in his left ear, which unbalances him.

Despite this, he says he is “in reasonable nick”.

Rosen says: “My eye is both blurry and gives me double vision and if I was less vain, I’d wear a patch as the right eye is fine. If people sit on my left it’s not very good.

“The hearing aid is okay but it’s no good in pubs and cafés and I turn it off in the theatre and just turn my head towards the stage.

“Luckily, the Old Vic had very good amplification and also it was in the round. You sit on the stage and the person to my left was my wife so it was fine — she didn’t mind me watching her.”

Michael is delighted to be returning to Henley, having previously appeared during the children’s part of the literary festival.

He says: “I’m very happy for people to ask questions as there’ll be time, it won’t just be me nattering. It should be a very positive occasion because this is about how you can cope.”

• Michael Rosen in conversation with Dr Rachel Clarke is at Christ Church in Reading Road, Henley, on Thursday, February 8 at 6pm. Tickets cost £15 for one ticket and a copy of his book, or £25 for two tickets and a book. For tickets, visit www.henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk