Comedian Rob Delaney wants to die in same room his son Henry died in after brain cancer diagnosis

US comedian and actor, Rob Delaney, has opened up about his feelings after the death of his son Henry who died in 2018 aged two following a brain tumour diagnosis. The 47-year-old was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, why he and his wife told Henry they were expecting their fourth son before anyone else.

He replied saying: “He had to know that this family that loved him was alive and was growing and that there was somebody that we were going to tell about him. I don’t know that there’d be another little nugget in the house that he could vibe with from whatever area in the cosmos he was, but he needed to know.

“And we knew that they would not overlap corporally on this Earth, even though Henry’s younger brother was born in the same room that Henry died in, our living room. We don’t live there anymore but when we moved out, I asked the landlord, I said, ‘Listen, if you ever go to sell this place, let me know first because I would like to buy it’. So that when I’m 81 I can crawl in here and die. In the same room that my son died in that my other son was born in’.”

However, Delaney said he and his spouse Leah Delaney had considered leaving London, but stayed because of memories of Henry.

“For so many reasons, we’ve stayed, one of which is I like to go put my hands on slides at the playground that Henry slid down. I like to see nurses, periodically bump into them that took care of him.

“So London is very important to me and London took very good care of him, the NHS at large, the friends that we made, even our little boy’s friends who took care of them. So London has helped us and taken care of us in many ways.”

At first, he thought he would struggle with a new addition to their family saying his heart had “been torn into pieces and dissolved in salt and it’s just garbage”. He added: “I’ll take care of this kid, I will feed him, I will put him in clothing that fits. I don’t know, am I gonna love him?

“I don’t know if I can do that anymore, and then the nanosecond he exited my wife’s body, I looked at him and just, you know, started weeping and was so in love with him and just wanted to sniff them and eat them and put them into my shirt and squeeze them and I love him desperately.

“And then you have to feel and honour your pain. You have to let it hurt and you can’t run away from it. When the feelings come it’s best to let them.”

The Catastrophe star has had more than two decades of sobriety following a car crash that prompted him to give up drinking. He also said: “It’s nothing more interesting than garden variety alcoholism, you know, I found that drinking just made me just feel better, complete, happier, relaxed.

“You know, anytime I took a drink, it was just like, this is it. I first got drunk at 12 and then began to drink with more regularity at 14.

“I mean, it could be as simple as you know, I had alcoholism on both sides of my family. And so then I got it too and… it doesn’t really care where you come from.”