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Catastrophe's Rob Delaney: I’m a mess 14 months after my son’s death

Catastrophe star Rob Delaney says he is still “a mess” after the death of his two-year-old son Henry and that coping with the loss is a “life-time work in progress”.

The toddler died from a brain tumour in January last year.

US actor and writer Delaney, who lives in London, said: “I’m a mess. My child died 14 months ago and I’m basically a bag of wet rubbish. I need a lot of help. It has been very hard. It comes in waves. I’ve learned to not control how the waves come. Right now I’m sad a lot.

“The reason I’m being honest with you and not trying to impress you, and make you think I’m cool or that I’m a tough guy, or maybe working through loss in an inspiring way, is that I have found that if a bereaved parent or bereaved sibling reads this, I want them to know that it’s okay that they feel terrible, sad, confused and so brutally humbled.

“I’ve been sad and angry and I am telling you that just in case somebody else who has suffered a terrible loss reads this — so they don’t feel like some asshole from TV has it all together. I am a life-time work in progress.”

Delaney, 42, was speaking at the Rainbow Trust’s annual fundraiser Trust In Fashion. The charity supports families with seriously ill children. He said: “We were at Great Ormond Street Hospital for seven months, and then we were at our local hospital for seven months, and then we were home with Henry for seven months, and then he died. It would have been towards the end of our Great Ormond Street stay that we would have been hooked up with Rainbow Trust. The care worker assigned to us was a woman named Fiona who was just amazing, and remains so. She still comes and visits us sometimes.

“At that point we didn’t know Henry was going to die. We knew he was disabled by his tumour and his surgery. Fiona was like a paratrooper who just drops in and has the skill set to help people in unbelievable pain and fear.”

Delaney — who has three other sons with wife Leah — was writing the final series of Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe when Henry died. He said: “I wanted my kids to see me work … I just wanted to project normalcy in an effort to maybe one day feel normal again.”

The final episode saw main characters Rob and Sharon meet an uncertain end. He said they could return, but added: “No time soon — I don’t really have anything else to say about marriage at the moment — I figure I have to live more before I can say anything else.”

  • Information at rainbowtrust.org.uk