Rob Delaney tweets about first Christmas without son Henry in bid to 'destigmatise grief'

‘I just want other bereaved parents and siblings to feel seen’

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Rob Delaney has written a series of emotional Tweets about spending his first Christmas without his son Henry, who died in January at the age of two after he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

The Catastrophe actor said he’d had a “horrible few days” over the festive season and explained how he felt the need to discuss his grief publicly in order to tackle a taboo that surrounds conversations regarding grief.

On Christmas Day, Delaney said he and his wife, who is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, spoke about their late son a lot in a bid to keep his memory alive.

“Our first Christmas without Henry came and went,” the actor’s Twitter thread begins.

“The day itself was okay, maybe because there were so many horrible, painful days leading up to it; we must have hit our quota or something.

"We talked about him a lot and included his memory throughout the day.”

“I speak publicly about Henry in an effort to destigmatise grief,” he added, explaining that his family is “sad and in pain” but that these feelings are obviously expected given what they’ve been through.

“Why wouldn’t we be sad? Why wouldn’t we be angry and confused?”

He added that his tweets weren’t “therapeutic”, nor was he writing them in a bid to update his fans.

“I just want other bereaved parents and siblings to feel seen/heard/respected/loved,” he continued.

“And maybe they might help someone not schooled in grief support a friend better. I don’t know.”

Delaney’s tweets have been widely shared, with the original one garnering more than 50,000 likes since it was posted on Boxing Day.

Henry was diagnosed with a particularly harmful type of tumour known as ependymoma when he was one year old.

It forced him to undergo a number of invasive surgeries that left him with partial facial paralysis and made him go deaf in one ear.

Though surgeons were able to remove the tumour, it grew back months later and Henry died soon after.

Delaney published an essay for Medium in September in which he detailed the experience of battling Henry's illness.

He explained how he had been keeping a diary throughout with the intention of publishing a book about it.

“But I can’t write that book anymore because our family’s story has a different ending than I’d hoped for,” he concluded.

“Maybe I’ll write a different book in the future, but now my responsibility is to my family and myself as we grieve our beautiful Henry.”