Blue Badge holders and those with access requirements can be dropped off on the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road (the road between the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery). And yet it is, as one might imagine, vital and very, very funny. When his father-in-law hugs them, post Henry’s diagnosis, and wishes that he could be ill instead, Delaney doesn’t hesitate: “We do too, Richard.” The image of the Delaney family dressed as skeletons on Halloween in the Great Ormond Street paediatric oncology ward suggests a family united in an appreciation for the curative effects of the darkest kind of humour, just as Delaney now finds great peace, even delight, in art that horrifies or depresses others – the songs of Elliott Smith, the film Midsommar. And he is self-aware about just how unreasonable grief has made him. He’s furious when a man tries to comfort him with the fact that his grandfather had survived a brain tumour: “Grandfathers are supposed to get tumours and die! That’s their job!” Perhaps because Henry died on his father’s birthday, having only had two himself, Delaney now can’t believe adults are so needy as to still celebrate them. If he hears co-workers are surprising a colleague with cake at 4pm, he “will go take a shit at 3.57”.

I had no idea it was going to be Rob Delaney, he who is beloved by me for the small, but crucial role of Peter in Deadpool 2 (X-Force!)I love how Delaney writes about Henry, always introducing him in words like 'my beautiful boy', forever reminding you how much he misses him. Overall, his writing flows well, and can be quite.. peppery, regarding cursing, if that's something that is important to you (if you can't curse when your child is dying, when can you?). Rob Delaney’s beautiful, bright, gloriously alive son Henry died. He was one when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. An experience beyond comprehension, but an experience Rob must share. Why does he feel compelled to talk about it, to write about it, to make people feel something like what he feels when he knows it will hurt them? Because, despite Henry’s death, Rob still loves people. For that reason, he wants them to understand. Most moving, though, are Delaney’s descriptions of the privilege of care. People don’t appreciate just how addictively wonderful it is to help someone you love, however exhausting, however devastating. Almost unbelievably, Delaney’s much-loved brother-in-law took his own life the year after Henry was diagnosed, following a period of depression. The bonding effect of his and his sister’s mutual agonies, the way their families responded with support, childcare, travel, listening, presence – these are the small actions, you feel, that make Delaney’s heart still “work”. His and Leah’s relationship also deepens, strengthens and blossoms in extremis. When events fracture us, it is the love of others that binds us together again, however imperfectly. Those practical and physical expressions of love – the relatives who learn to clean Henry’s tracheostomy or the calluses that develop on Delaney’s fingers from operating his son’s suctioning machine – are some of the most moving images of the book. My disabled sister, who died in 2020, also required regular suctioning; it is amazing how profoundly one misses the mind-numbingly tedious aspects of care. It’s difficult for love to find similar active expression once that person is gone. There were often moments reading this book when I had to look away and cry. But Delaney is acutely aware that this will be the case. “Why do I feel compelled to talk about it… to disseminate information designed to make people feel something like I feel? Done properly, it will hurt them. Why do I want to hurt people?” 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.

All of which is to ask the question: is it possible to write a critical review of someone who is bearing witness, in writing, to the incalculable pain and emotional chaos suffered on the death of their young child? Does the weight of its emotional punch do away with the need for an anaemic assessment of a writer’s craft? Or is the very act of writing something so transgressively raw and open, a cry for these experiences to be normalised – and therefore a request for it to be treated like any other book? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be mean if it were awful, at least publicly. Which makes me worry that I’ll sound disingenuous when I say that it gives me great pleasure, and no pleasure at all, to write that Rob Delaney’s new book is both overwhelmingly moving and, in any other way you might assess a book, excellent. Much as I wish he hadn’t had to write it, I am glad he did, because such deaths do happen, but largely in private I watched the interview and raced to buy the book...which was weeks from release. And it was because this author said something I felt like I'd been waiting to hear since June of 2018 when my 10 year old daughter Isabel, who spent five days on an ECMO, passed away from a cardiac arrest. And that was that he wanted to "write something very angry and hurt people." He didn't, by the way. There is righteous anger in this beautiful book, but I identified instantly with that sentiment without him having to explain why. A Heart That Works is Delaney’s written expression of the experience, an intimate and fiercely funny exploration of what happened – from the harrowing events, to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that follows, through to the forceful love left behind. SCOTT NEUMYER: You’ve written a book about the most horrifying thing that can happen to a person, the death of their child, and now you’ve likely been talking about it in multiple interviews as well. How are you holding up?

Loving and then grieving Henry has changed us and how we look at the world,’ says Delaney. ‘I hope our story can shine a little light into some very dark corners.’ And then there is Henry. “In between Henry’s death was, of course, his life. That’s my favourite part. Henry led a hell of a life.” Little Henry liked Incy Wincy Spider, dancing to Justin Bieber, and, curiously, thumbing through one of those 1913 hen-do books, Don’ts for Husbands. He was “impossibly sweet and calm”. The last food he ate before the tracheostomy that left him permanently tube-fed was a chocolate croissant. SN: It seems like you have an incredibly supportive family all the way around. Were your wife and family on board with you writing this from the start, or was there ever a moment when your wife maybe said something like, “This is a wound I just don’t want you to open again”? Two years later Henry died, and his family watched their world fall away to reveal the things that matter most. I will not tell you anything else about the moments before or after Henry’s death. I can talk about them, but I don’t want to try to confine them to ink. Maybe you have experienced something like them, or maybe someday you will."

Delaney talks about the madness of his grief, the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose when you’re the one left behind. A heart-wrenching and impressively self-aware story of a father living through the death of his young child. RD: More for others. I thought, basically, for better or for worse, I’m on TV and in movies, so some people know who I am out there in the wider world, which makes it a little easier for me to get a message out there. And only now do I have a message worth sharing. I haven’t done anything original with the book. I’ve just done what people do in AA, and what people do in our bereaved parents’ group, which is honestly tell about what it’s like to have your child die. And then what people do with that is up to them. But if I do it honestly, and I really tell the truth to the best of my abilities of what it feels like, then I know that might help other people who’ve lost kids, who’ve lost siblings. And that’s not because I’m anything special. It’s because I’m no better and no worse than any other bereaved parents out there. But I have seen, felt, and lived through something that is rare. It’s happened millions of times, but percentage wise, most people don’t have a child die. And so, I guess I did feel a responsibility. People know who I am, so I better use that in a way that can help people. RD: Everything makes me a better writer. As a human being, rather than “better,” I would say it has made me more useful. Like if a car runs somebody over, better having me there than your average, non-EMT in that if you’re going through something difficult, I might be of better use than I used to be anyway. A drop-off point at the Royal Festival Hall (30 metres) has been created for visitors who are unable to walk from alternative car parks. Our Access SchemeIn this memoir of loss, acclaimed writer and comedian Rob Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind. But that’s basically it for the N.H.S. “A discussion of national healthcare policy would be a book unto itself,” Delaney notes. Talking about Henry for a few moments in a political-campaign video is one thing; going on at any length about those politics in a book about Henry is, we can perhaps imagine, another. In a campaign video, Delaney has a mission: to mobilize his audience. In “A Heart That Works” he has a different one. If you come away with a newfound appreciation of health care as a public good, Delaney would probably like that. But it’s not the point. He’s trying to coax you up to the edge of grief’s abyss, and do what it takes—even tell you jokes—to get you to peer inside a little longer than you might have otherwise and, by doing so, maybe begin to learn something about how you want to live (which is related, but not reducible, to the question of how you want to vote). The voice behind the hit show Catastrophe, actor, writer, and comedian Rob Delaney probably didn’t want to talk to me, and for good reason. He certainly didn’t want to be in a position to be able to write his latest book, A Heart That Works, either. But he felt compelled. This is a rallying call against the polite timidity that we often show grief. It is a howl into the dark. But this is also a story of immense love. The affection and support Delaney shares with his wife and sons, as they live between hospitals and from MRI to MRI, is wonderful to read about. I’m no better and no worse than any other bereaved parents out there. But I have seen, felt, and lived through something that is rare.

The next step was to actually read it, which I did in a few short hours, alternately laughing my ass off, crying, or staring in disbelief at the serendipities in our experiences: from the importance of Joan Didion, to memorial tattoos (I have a sleeve of them) to a loved one's suicide, to our children dying in 2018 on our birthdays. Plus, a host of micro-similarities that only come from having an inkling of what the writer is talking about. I am by no means an authority on his grief, but I'm in the club and I get it. And reading this book was him saying to me, "I get it." SN: The book is beautiful, and it’s such a celebration of Henry’s life. It also feels very much like a private journal in ways, almost like a diary. Is this something that you were writing as everything was going on with Henry and his treatment, or was this something that it took you a while to sit down and decide you needed to write? Any sized item can be left in our cloakroom, including fold-away bicycles. We don’t accept non-folding bicycles. Items must be collected on the same day they are stored. From time to time, the cloakroom may not be available. You won’t be able to bring any bags over 40 x 25 x 25cm into the auditorium of the Royal Festival Hall or the Queen Elizabeth Hall, or into the Hayward Gallery, so please leave large bags at home.Most of the audience had likely heard Delaney raving about the N.H.S. before. He and his family moved to England so that he could act in the British sitcom “Catastrophe,” which he starred in and co-wrote with Sharon Horgan. After the show took off, Delaney and his family stayed; in the years since, he’s become a British household name. In 2015, his wife gave birth to their third son, Henry. Shortly after Henry turned one, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He spent much of his life in hospitals, and died before he turned three. Ever since, Delaney has been publicly candid about his grief, and about his appreciation for all that the N.H.S. did for his family. He made a campaign video for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, sharing his family’s story to give emotional weight to arguments against health-spending cuts and health-care privatization. He’s made similar appeals to American audiences, urging people to vote for Bernie Sanders, to join the Democratic Socialists of America, and to fight for health care as a public good. A devastatingly candid account of a parent’s grief that will have readers laughing and crying in equal measure. 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. After [Henry] died, I had the odd sensation of somehow being older than my parents, or at the very least having seen something that they hadn't, and it had changed me. ...No one had anything to offer me that could light my path and show me a way forward...That was a very sad and lonely feeling. Shondaland spoke with Delaney about Henry, the emotional toll of writing, and how love ultimately binds us all.