Rob Delaney wrote a book about his late son, because he wanted to make it clear how “awful” grief is.
Rob Delaney wrote a book about his late son, because he wanted to make it clear how ‘awful’ grief is
The 47-year-old actor tragically lost two-year-old Henry following a battle with brain cancer in 2018, and he penned a tome about his boy to convey the “nightmare” reality of losing a child, but admitted the reader can “glean hope” from his family being “OK now”.
Speaking on the ‘Today’ show, he said: “I always thought there’s a lot of stuff written about grief where people are kind of like, ‘And then one day the sun came out again.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, enough of that.’
“It’s a nightmare and I figured the best thing I could do was sort of elucidate how awful it is.
“And let the reader glean hope by seeing that my family is OK now, but I didn’t want to prescribe it like, ‘It’ll all be fine.’ Cause a lot of things aren’t fine.”
The ‘Catastrophe’ star admitted he “loves to talk” about his late son.
He added: “In 2018, my son Henry, he died of a brain tumour that he was diagnosed with right around his first birthday.
“And yeah, he died in the beginning of 2018 and he was just the sweetest little most wonderful guy.
“We say that about all of our kids but Henry was better than other children.
“And he was so funny and his brain tumour was in the back of his head near his brain stem, so it brought him a lot of physical disabilities ‘cause that stuff is controlled back there.
“But his frontal lobe was fine so he was very funny and smart and charming and gorgeous and flirty and silly and brilliant.
“He learned sign language cause he couldn’t talk cause he had a tracheostomy.
“I love to talk about him. He’s my son, I’m his dad.
“His brothers miss him, his mom misses him, and he’s part of our family, so I don’t know how to not talk about him.”
Earlier this month, Rob told how he would love to buy the home his son died in.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on ‘Desert Island Discs’, Rob said: “We don’t live there any more but when we moved out I asked the landlord, ‘Listen, if you are ever going to sell this place will you let me know first because I would like to buy it’, so when I’m 81 I can crawl in here and die, in the same room that my son died in, that my other son was born in.”
