‘People were afraid they might catch dead kid from us’: Rob Delaney opens up about grief following death of his son

Rob Delaney has opened up about how those closest to him handled his grief following the death of his son, Henry.

The actor and his wife Leah’s son died in January 2018 at the age of two, following two years of treatment for a brain tumour.

Delaney opened up about Henry’s diagnosis and death in an interview with Marc Maron for the comedian’s WTF podcast.

Speaking to Maron, Delaney explained that he was surprised by other people’s reactions after Henry’s death.

The Catastrophe writer and star was asked when he started to realise that people had “no real emotional sense of how to deal” with his grief.

“It’s not everybody,” Delaney replied before going on to reference Maron’s own grief (the host lost his girlfriend, director Lynn Shelton, in 2020).

“As you may have experienced yourself, you can be surprised by some people stepping up beautifully. And then other people who you think would have been there f*** off and do a terrible job.”

He added: “A lot of people were wonderful [...] but then some people are afraid of you. As they say, losing a child is people who have children’s greatest fear and so I think people were afraid of us.

“That’s my stab at it... is that they were afraid of us. That they might catch dead kid from us. Or they’d have to imagine, you know.”

Delaney went on to say that most people don’t know what to say to someone who is grieving.

“The question isn’t what do I say, better is what do I do,” he said. “Nobody is so good at talking that they can heal the pain of death.”