But here’s the thing: Rob Delaney does talk to me, and he’s not only incredibly gracious, thankful, and eloquent (all while still being heartbroken in so many ways), but he’s also funny and hopeful for the future and full of love for his family. It is this mindset that makes A Heart That Works so searingly beautiful and so utterly tragic at the same time. A memoir that feels like a diary written by a man who must watch as he’s helpless to save his young child, the book is raw and honest, which is precisely what makes it one that will likely help those who find themselves in a similar position. A Heart That Works is a testament to a father’s love and finding hope when it feels impossible. In 2016, Rob Delaney’s one-year-old son Henry was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Amidst hospital life, surgeries, chemotherapy and a newfound community of carers, his family learnt the starkest truths about life. 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”.

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? His memoir offers solace to those who have faced devastation – and helps those who haven’t understood where the true meaning of life is found. 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.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.

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. My first introduction to Rob Delaney was on Elizabeth Day’s brilliant podcast, How to Fail. During the episode, he spoke with great candour about his son Henry, who – aged one – was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and later, devastatingly, died.SN: You also write about how people have asked if writing the fourth season of Catastrophe was therapeutic, but I want to switch that up a little bit: Was writing this book, if not therapeutic, was it cathartic in a way? A Heart That Works is an intimate, unflinching and fiercely funny exploration of loss – from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that follows, through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains. 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.

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. When Henry finally dies, Delaney very specifically ropes off what he will and won't tell the reader: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).

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? I loved this on The New Yorker: There’s Nothing Decorous About Rob Delaney’s Grief. Rob Delaney Author Bio Describing how he and his sister are there for each other: "When one of us cries to the other, we don't try to fix it; we don't stammer platitudes. We just listen and hold."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. Delaney writes beautifully about how caring for – and loving – his son became almost an addiction; and the way he writes about missing the calluses that develop on his fingers from operating his son’s suctioning machine was as touching a depiction as it was cruel.