My Eddie, a vision on a sleigh: a story of grief for Christmas

Twenty-six years on from the sudden death of his son, the author still wonders how he should write about and remember him

- Michael Rosen

Twenty-six years on from the sudden death of his son, the author still wonders how he should write about and remember himI ask myself, what have I learned from thinking about Eddie, my son, who died of meningococcal septicaemia (sepsis) in 1999 aged nearly 19? (All those 9s, I often think.)

I've got it, now, that the difficulty is not death - that’s a very ordinary thing. The difficult bit is grief. Then if I ask what grief is, I answer myself by saying, grief is being sad that things aren’t the same as they were. Then I say to myself, but nothing’s the same. Everything’s changing all the time.

So I ask myself, should I put grief into this big, big thing of everything changing?

Yep, I say.

But then, what about the fact that he isn’t here?

Well, that’s not true. He is here. Every time I think about him, he’s here. And every time anyone else thinks about him, he’s there. He’s all over the place.

Ah, but think of all those things that you enjoyed doing with him — going to Arsenal, listening to his jokes, playing cricket on the beach. And Christmas. He loved Christmas. He spent hours and hours choosing presents and loving the presents he got.

Yes. And?

Well, it’s sad that that’s gone.

But no more sad than my other children's childhoods, surely? Their childhoods are all gone, too. Why taint Eddie’s childhood with the memory of what came later, spoiling the memories with the fact that he died? Why spoil the memories?

Yes. Good point.

You could write a story about that.