BBC Breakfast guest opens up on son's heartbreaking death 'I had to find a way to live'

BBC Breakfast spoke to renowned children's author Michael Rosen on Wednesday's show, where he emotionally discussed the death of his son in 1999.

The 79-year-old author, who has penned over 200 books including the beloved We're Going on a Bear Hunt, graced the BBC studio to chat about his latest work Good Days: An A-Z of Hope and Happiness.

Discussing the book, host Sarah Campbell noted that Michael had delved into some rather profound topics, highlighting that D is dedicated to death.

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This led Michael to share his personal experience, saying: "People know maybe my son died in 1999 and I had to find a way to live with that and not give up. How do you do that?

"I talk about that and one of the things I did was to find out how and why he died because I didn't want it to be a mystery. When it's a mystery you can be overcome by it, you can be enveloped by it, so I wanted to find out and it was meningitis. So I wanted to find out as much as doctors know about meningitis so I talk about that", reports the Express.

"But also he had all sorts of friends that I hadn't seen for, well, 25 years and so I thought: 'Well what would it be like if I dare meet up with them?'

"So, let's call him Greg, I got in touch with Greg, and I said: 'We've never met, let's meet, so we met just round the corner from where we had met just before Eddie died.' It was Eddie and his best mate Greg.

"We sat and talked and Greg said you know Eddie had a joke book, I said: 'What do you mean jokes?' and he said: 'He wrote jokes, he made up jokes! I go round telling Eddie's jokes and I say this is an Eddie Rosen joke!', then he tells it."

Michael then joked: "I can't repeat it as it's disgusting!", he emotionally added: "I just thought well that's fundamental to my beliefs that we live on after we die but I don't believe elsewhere, we live on in people's imaginations.

"I had no idea that Eddie lived on with Greg all these years and he goes round telling Eddie Rosen jokes and I just thought that's wonderful so that's a way of living with death you see!"

Michael's son, Eddie, tragically passed away back in 1999 when he was nearly 19 due to meningitis.

BBC Breakfast airs each morning at 6am on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.