CRY FROM THE HEART
Rob Delaney’s raw memoir about losing son Henry gives other grieving parents a voice
ICAN’T imagine what you’re going through. It’s a platitude passed off to people experiencing the worst. But comedian and “Catastrophe” co-star and founder Rob Delaney, who lost his 2-year-old son, Henry, from a rare type of brain tumor in 2018, wants people to imagine. In the first few pages of “A Heart That Works”(Spiegel & Grau, out now) Delaney writes, “not infrequently, I find myself wanting to ask people I know and like to imagine a specific child of theirs, dead in their arms.”
The memoir is raw, honest, and speaks to what is often left unsaid about death — particularly the death of a child. Adrienne Finnegan, 41, whose son, Kian, passed away at age 3 in September from brain cancer, says the book couldn’t come out soon enough.
“I’ve been counting down the days since the publication date,” says the Syracuse native. “It gave me words.” Finnegan describes Delaney’s analogy of now having a black band in his personal rainbow of experiences as being exactly how she wants friends and family to understand her new worldview. “It’s like, ‘Gosh, I can explain it for the first time.’ ”
Delaney writes: “I suppose I think we have a rainbow of emotions . . . I still have all the colors in my rainbow after Henry’s death. Name an emotion: I can still feel it, and often do. Leah and our boys laugh every day. But now there’s a band of black in my rainbow, too, that wasn’t there before. Or if it was there, I couldn’t see it before Henry died.”
Finnegan adds that “black band rainbows” has already become a new shorthand in her conversations with other families experiencing grief. It’s a way to acknowledge that life is different. She also appreciates how Delaney doesn’t shy away from the physicality and horror of childhood cancer treatment.
“A lot of our own experiences were really grotesque,” says Finnegan. “Treatment can be brutal and painful.”
Finnegan points to the section of the book where Delaney describes his experience with his son’s tracheostomy. He had to frequently change a tracheostomy tube, restraining Henry in the process, which often led to bleeding during the procedure. “With Henry, I had in fact seen blood issue forth from a bulletshaped hole in the neck of someone I loved very much,” writes Delaney.
“Worse than that, I was sometimes the reason that blood was coming out of that hole.”
Within the horror, fear, and isolation are also moments of levity and connection.
These moments, too, are not spoken about as much as they could be, according to people familiar with the world of pediatric cancer. One oncology nurse, who wishes to be anonymous due to patient confidentiality, says what resonated most with her in the book was a scene where Delaney writes about having sex with his wife while his son is in surgery.
“I’ve had parents who have gotten pregnant while their children were sick and feel so guilty that people think they are having fun while their child is suffering,” she says.
Although less than 200 pages, the searing memoir is giving experts tools — and helping remind people they aren’t alone, even when facing the unimaginable.
Chase Cassine, LCSW, a grief therapist in New Orleans, La., already has plans to use the book in his clinical work.
“Grief is universal, and grief is isolating. What [Delaney] is doing is giving people the tools to validate the experience of grief, and to understand that grief and loss is sad, but can also have moments of joy, anger, fear. It’s helping people not feel alone.”
Finnegan has found that Delaney’s work has given her courage to share about her own journey — and hopes other parents feel the same. “It takes bravery to talk about things honestly. I’m not as cool and funny as Rob Delaney. You see people pull away,” she says. “I wonder all the time, ‘how many people have unfollowed me because I make their Facebook feeds too sad?’ I do have a lot of hope and gratitude, which is genuine, but I’m scared to write about the angry part and the grotesque part. And it’s so important because it gives context, and helps people imagine how we feel.”