The grief of a comedian

In early 2016, Rob Delaney thought his life was pretty much perfect, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Times (U.K.). After decades in the entertainment wilderness, the American comedian was now the star of a hit British TV series, Catastrophe; his stand-up shows were selling out; and Hollywood was calling. Then everything changed. On his eldest son’s fifth birthday, Delaney’s 9-month-old, Henry, threw up. Delaney, now 41, assumed Henry had eaten too much party food. “It didn’t seem like a big deal,” Delaney says, but the vomiting didn’t stop. Henry kept losing weight, and doctors only diagnosed the cause when he was a year old: a large, malignant tumor next to his brain stem. He underwent emergency surgery and relentless rounds of chemotherapy; Henry died last January at age 2 . Delaney still struggles with grief daily, but finds it a relief when people ask how he’s doing—so long as they’re ready to hear the answer. “The answer is that my heart hurts, OK? I had trouble getting out of bed today, and I cried before I got up. Then I played with my other kids, said hello to my wife, and I started to feel better. Then I got sad again. So I love that question. I’m a balloon that is filled almost to the point of bursting, and when you bring up my dead son, it’s like you’ve let a little out. It’s like a gift.”