Michelle: Okay, Mark. Quick role-play. You're a network executive. I'm pitching you a memoir by a famous comedian. The topic: his two-year-old son dying of a brain tumor. Mark: Pass. Hard pass. Sounds like the least funny thing imaginable. Unless... the comedian is Rob Delaney? Michelle: Exactly. And that's why it's one of the most profound, and strangely, most vital books on grief you'll ever read. Today we are diving into A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney. Mark: I know him, of course. The hit show Catastrophe. He's brilliant. But taking on this subject... I can't even wrap my head around it. Michelle: And that's what makes the book so unique. Delaney, who is this BAFTA-winning co-creator, wrote this after his son Henry was diagnosed. What's incredible is how he uses a direct, unadorned prose style—he actually credits writers like Alice Munro for teaching him this—to tackle this immense tragedy. There's no flowery language, just devastating honesty. Mark: That makes sense. Because how could you possibly dress up that kind of pain? It’s hard to even imagine how humor could fit into a story like this.

Michelle: That's the genius of it. The humor isn't about making light of the situation; it's about staring into the abyss and not flinching. It’s a tool for survival. He shares these small, absurd moments, like when they were arranging Henry's funeral and discovered the funeral director's name was Barry White. Mark: No. Come on. Michelle: Yes. And he just notes that it brought him and his wife a few, much-needed smiles. It’s these tiny, surreal details. But the humor also gets much, much darker. It becomes a way of processing the sheer insanity of their situation. Mark: What do you mean by darker? Michelle: There's this one story that is just staggering. A month after his brother-in-law, Tobias, died by suicide—which happened while Henry was sick, a whole other layer of tragedy—his sister and his mom go to get grief tattoos. Mark: Wow, okay. Michelle: Afterwards, they're at a bar, and an acquaintance comes up. The guy complains at length about his daughter's divorce. Then he asks Rob's sister, Maggie, how she's doing. She just says, flatly, "Pretty bad. My husband died by suicide a month ago. We have a two-year-old daughter. I don’t know what to do." Mark: Oh, man. That poor guy. He walked right into it. Michelle: The man is just dumbstruck. So he turns to Rob's mom and asks about Rob. And she just lays it all out—Henry's brain tumor, the chemo, the disabilities. The guy mentally shuts down and staggers away. And in that moment, Maggie and her mom just start laughing hysterically. A "cackling, dolphin-like laughter of the insane." Mark: That's incredible. It’s like their grief is so immense, it breaks the normal rules of social interaction. The laughter isn't happiness, it's... a release valve? It’s the only possible response to the sheer absurdity of someone complaining about a divorce in the face of their world-ending tragedies. Michelle: Exactly. Delaney even has this phrase for the "cosmic symmetry" of his and his sister's parallel tragedies. It's a humor born from a place so dark, it's on the other side of tears. It’s a way of saying, "This is so awful, it's almost a joke." Mark: It’s a language only they can speak. And it’s probably the most honest response possible.

Mark: But that laughter also highlights how isolated they are. Their reality is just on a different planet from everyone else's. And Delaney talks about that isolation in a really physical way, right? Michelle: He does. He makes it clear that grief isn't just an emotion; it's a full-body condition. It rewrites your physical reality. The most powerful example is the scuba diving story. He had a lifelong, irrational fear of lakes and ponds. He’d imagine zombie postmen pulling him under. Mark: I remember that part. It was so specific and bizarre. Michelle: Right. But a few months after Henry died, he and his wife took a scuba course. The instructor had them do a drill designed to induce panic: sit at the bottom of a twelve-foot pool, mask off, eyes closed. And Delaney felt... nothing. No fear. Mark: Nothing? Michelle: He describes this "dark sort of peace." He realized that if he died, he would just be walking through the same door his son had walked through. He says, "We would share one more thing together. And that would be fucking great." His grief had completely overridden his primal survival instinct. Mark: That gives me chills. It’s like love and grief are more powerful than the will to live. The thing that should terrify him most becomes a source of potential comfort. It’s a total inversion of how we're wired. Michelle: It is. And that physicality of grief shows up in smaller, but just as poignant, ways. He talks about the callouses he developed on his fingers from operating Henry's suction machine, hundreds of times a day. After Henry died, the callouses started to fade. Mark: Oh, I can see where this is going. Michelle: He was devastated. He writes, "Please let me have my little hard bumps on my fingers... They told me that I loved him and he needed me and that he was real." The callouses were tangible proof of his love and his role as a caregiver. Mark: So the physical proof of his love was disappearing. That's heartbreaking. It’s not just a memory; it’s a physical part of him that's gone. It’s why he says he wished he could wear all black, so his internal state would be visible to the world. He wanted people to see the wound. Michelle: Exactly. Because as he so brutally puts it, "You forget that my son died. Then you remember. Then you forget again. I don’t forget." That chasm between his constant reality and the world's fleeting memory is the core of that isolation.

Michelle: And that intense, physical love is what he and his wife, Leah, used to actively protect their family. It wasn't passive; it was work. He’s very clear that many people warned them that losing a child often destroys a marriage. Mark: I’ve heard that statistic. The strain is just unimaginable. Michelle: So they made an "active decision to protect our marriage, day in, day out." They implemented weekly dates, even when Henry was in the ICU. Sometimes it was just a walk holding hands, or breakfast near the hospital. But it was about looking at each other, touching, and checking in. Mark: That's just... heroic. In the middle of hell, they're scheduling date night. It speaks to his point that a marriage requires just as much attention as a child. Michelle: It does. He developed this metaphor of the family as "five fingers of the same hand," meaning every finger is important and needs attention. He talks about how his older sons, Eugene and Oscar, were so involved. At six years old, Eugene learned how to operate Henry's complex feeding pump. They would play with him, practice signing with him. They found ways to have fun, even celebrating Halloween as a family of skeletons in the pediatric cancer ward. Mark: The resilience of kids is just astounding. But that must have been so hard on them, too. Michelle: Immensely. He talks about Eugene’s "preternatural" emotional wisdom, but also how he would just "freak out and cry and scream LIKE THE CHILD THAT HE WAS." It's a portrait of a family holding on to each other with everything they have. Mark: And then, in the midst of all this, they make another unbelievable choice. Michelle: Yes. After they learn Henry's cancer is back and he is going to die, Leah goes off the pill. She gets pregnant "instantly." Mark: That must have been the most emotionally complex nine months imaginable. Hope and grief, all in the same body. Michelle: He says Henry was the first person they told, and he was excited to be a big brother. Their fourth son, Teddy, was born a few months after Henry died. Delaney has this beautiful, heartbreaking dream where Henry has left a message for Teddy inside Leah's womb, nailed to the wall in a tiny picture frame. A message only Teddy could see. Mark: Wow. That’s a powerful way for the subconscious to build a bridge between them. A connection that transcends life and death.

Mark: So what's the big takeaway here? Is it a book about death? It feels like it’s about so much more. Michelle: It's about what happens after the irreparable disaster. It's not about healing, because as he makes clear, some things can't be fixed. It's about how a heart keeps working. The book opens with a quote from the musician Juliana Hatfield: "A heart that hurts is a heart that works." Mark: I like that. The pain is the proof. Michelle: Exactly. The pain is proof of the love. This book is a testament to that love. It's a raw, angry, funny, and beautiful document of a love that is so immense it survives the absolute worst thing that can happen. Mark: It really challenges you to think about what it means to support someone. He talks about how the best response he got when he told someone Henry was going to die was from a carer who just wailed, "Oh no! Oh Henry! Oh, Jesus Christ, no!" Michelle: Yes. He found it so much more comforting than the awkward platitudes. Her raw, honest pain mirrored his own. And it leaves you with a question: How do we show up for people in their darkest moments? Delaney shows that sometimes the best response isn't a solution or a comforting phrase, but just witnessing the pain without flinching. Mark: It's a powerful reminder. We'd love to hear what resonated with you all. Find us on our socials and share your thoughts on how we can better support each other through grief. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.