Rob Delaney and his wife, Leah, welcomed a baby boy in August, seven months after their 2-year-old son, Henry, died from brain cancer.
The Catastrophe actor shared the news in an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine published on Sunday, December 30. “We likely would’ve had a fourth anyway. But I mean, there’s mixed feelings,” Delaney, 41, revealed. “It’s sort of like they touch each other a little bit, they exist in separate lanes. Having another child in no way, shape or form eases the grief of Henry dying.”
This is the first Father’s Day since my beautiful Henry died. Love today to all dads & moms who’ve lost a child.🦉 pic.twitter.com/nUmO3Qeybd
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) June 17, 2018
But the “magical” infant has brought his family an infinite amount of joy. “I want to gobble him up and he deserves our full attention and love,” the comedian explained. “And he grew in the same womb as Henry.”
The Massachusetts native welcomes questions about Henry’s death. “I tell people, 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,” he told the magazine. “I’m an ambassador from the f—king other side now, and I feel a bit of a responsibility, being in the public eye, to show people what grief looks like. It’s just so weird to me how we deny grief, how we shut it out.”
Delaney took to Twitter on December 26 to reflect on his first Christmas without Henry. “The day itself was okay, maybe because there were so many horrible, painful days leading up to it,” he wrote. “We must have hit our quota or something. We talked about him a lot & included his memory throughout the day.”
Henry was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2016, shortly after he celebrated his first birthday. He died in January 2018.
“My wife and Henry’s older brothers are devastated of course,” Delaney wrote on Facebook in February. “Henry was a joy. He was smart, funny and mischievous and we had so many wonderful adventures had together.”
