Rob Delaney says he wants to die in same room as his son

On July 7, 2024, 12:01 PM

The US actor and comedian Rob Delaney has said he wants to buy the home his son died in so he can also experience his last moments there.

Delaney’s two-year-old child Henry died in 2018 after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Delaney told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs he asked the landlord when he moved out: “Listen, if you ever go to sell this place, let me know first because I would like to buy it.

“So 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.”

Before Henry died, his parents told him they were expecting another child.

The Catastrophe and Deadpool 2 star said: “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.

“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.”

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The actor has campaigned for the NHS since the death of his son

Delaney, 47, told the programme that he and his wife, Leah, had considered leaving London but had continued to live in the city 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.”

He added that he sometimes bumps into the nurses that looked after his son and said London and the NHS had taken very good care of his child.

Delaney has previously described the NHS as “the pinnacle of human achievement” and that his family received “truly unbelievable” care while Henry was sick.

Heart was ‘torn into pieces and dissolved in salt’

Delaney thought he would struggle with the birth of his new son, saying his heart had “been torn into pieces and dissolved in salt” and was just “garbage”.

But he told host Lauren Laverne that 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.”

Delaney also spoke about his recovery from alcoholism, saying he has been sober for more than two decades after a car crash prompted him to stop drinking.

He added: “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 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.”