Now Delaney and his wife, Leah, live in London with their three sons, the youngest of whom was born after Henry died. Henry spent months of his life living in a few different London hospitals, and the book is full of appreciation for the UK’s National Health Service and children’s hospice charities like the Rainbow Trust. In the wake of Henry’s death, Delaney has become an outspoken campaigner on behalf of the organizations that supported his family, speaking at political rallies and even weaving some lewd jokes about his love for the NHS into his stand-up routines. Absolutely gutted me. I felt the need to listen to Rob tell his story, to sit and hold that space for him.

This is a beautiful, beautiful book. I cried through a quarter of it. The five year anniversary of Conor’s passing from brain cancer is approaching and Rob Delaney puts into words SO well what that experience is like. This book is raw and heartbreaking and of course, since he’s a comedian, it’s just the right amount of funny. I want to say so much more about it but don’t feel I can do it justice.There is a haunting rant when he recalls people asking more openly about his father’s cancer than his son’s. “Have you forgotten that I held my two-year old’s body after rigor mortis had set in?… Why don’t you ask me about that, you stupid fking ahole?” SN: I feel like this book is going to help a lot of people. I feel like so many people will walk away from this book feeling changed. I feel like I’m a better father, a better person, for having read it. Truly. Shondaland spoke with Delaney about Henry, the emotional toll of writing, and how love ultimately binds us all. RD: Well, only my wife’s opinion mattered to me. I love my extended family, but he’s our son. So, I talked to my wife before I started and said, “What do you think of this?” And she thought it was a good idea. She was behind it. And then she read drafts as I was writing it and was massively helpful. So, she was totally okay with me writing it. What a relief it is that the memoir of Rob Delaney, comedian and co-writer/star of Catastrophe, is excellent: tender, perceptive and strangely, darkly funny amid unconscionable tragedy. This is a book about the death in 2018 of Delaney’s son Henry, at the age of two, from a brain tumour. I’m not sure how I’d have reviewed the writing down of such intimate grief had it not been good, but fortunately it is. Very.

To make things almost impossible, more death visits the Delaney family, and it makes the sadness almost insurmountable. But of course they have to deal with it.I'm also under the general suspicion that he and David Harbour are the same person. It's the mustache. Have they ever been in the same room together? Just saying.)

About Us Advertise Online Why Did I Get This Ad? About Our Ads Community Guidelines Press Room Other Hearst SubscriptionsWhy the compulsion to revisit such pain? Delaney explains: “This is one thing grief does to me. It makes me want to make you understand.” This is the story of Henry’s short but so loved life, written beautifully by a father whose life was transformed first by cancer and then by grief.