A Heart That Works: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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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”?

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. RD: Well, that’s very kind of you to say. If there’s anything people can glean from merely reading the book, rather than experiencing it, is that the people we love and care for and take care of and value are all going to die. They’re just these temporarily coalesced little constellations of stardust that we have to be grateful for and love. We need to recognize the miracle of their existence and the ephemeral nature of everything that we love and hold dear. I read an excerpt of Rob Delaney's book A Heart That Works in the Sunday Times last autumn. After reading the article and crying through most of it, I knew that I both wanted to, and simultaneously didn't want to, read the entire book. My four children are the same age as the author's which makes it all the more painful and heartrending to read.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." 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).

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. Suffering an incredible tragedy, like the loss of Delaney’s 2-year-old son Henry to a brain tumor in 2018, is something no one should ever have to experience, much less have to write about. But to then have to relive this very tragedy again as I ask him questions about his book? Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me either. 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. 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. 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.

Delaney describes watching Henry die at home. He encourages people to spend time with the bodies of recently deceased loved ones, if circumstances allow. He recalls telling “the loud builders next door my son was lying dead on our bed and we had to keep the windows open, so please stop work for the day.” The loud builders stopped. “I will not tell you anything else about the moments before or after Henry’s death,” Delaney writes, opting instead to outline the intensity of those moments in negative, and taking an implicit stand against the idea that writing honestly or usefully about the worst things in the world has to mean listing every single detail of what happened. “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.” 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. 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.

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. Delaney’s heartache is visceral and violent – a “decaying disused train station while freight train after freight train overloaded with pain roars through”. He doesn’t hope for death but one day, when he is learning to scuba dive at the bottom of a pool in Soho, he thinks that if something went wrong, he’d at least get to be with Henry.Read this entire book in one sitting. Cried all the way through apart from when I was bawling, rather than sobbing. Finished it and went straight upstairs to hug my son. What a story. Absolutely gutted me. I felt the need to listen to Rob tell his story, to sit and hold that space for him. 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. 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. 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.