American comedian, writer and actor Rob Delaney spoke movingly about his late son Henry during his first ever interview on The Late Late Show on Friday night.
Delaney, who came to mainstream prominence from co-creating and starring in Catastrophe alongside Sharon Horgan, movingly told host Patrick Kielty about his family tragedy.
He said that he wrote about Henry's life, death and lasting impact in his book, A Heart That Works, as he "wanted to talk about him and wanted more people to know about him."
Viewers were shown photographs of Henry, including a picture of him on the day he was diagnosed with a brain tumour, as well as photos of him after he had the tumour removed.
Delaney outlined how "around his first birthday" he moved into the hospital and stayed there for 14 months while he was received treatment, before spending his last seven months in the family home.
The couple have three other boys and Delaney was quick to praise his two eldest children - now aged 12 and ten - for caring for Henry throughout his illness.
He said, "One thing we did do well is we constantly had his older brothers in hospital - regularly there'd be one hospital bed with three kids in it.
"I'm grateful we knew to keep the kids [together] as much as possible".
"And then when we did finally get him home for the last seven months of his life... when we finally got them back under the same roof, we were very happy."
Kielty asked how Delaney explained to his other children that their brother was going to die.
Delaney responded, "We build up these egos - understandably - through the decades of living, and I'm in my 40s and thinking, 'How do I shield and protect the kids from this?'"
He continued, "And you can't do that... they sense something's wrong - be it an impending divorce, or someone's sick, or some weird lie that people aren't being honest about... kids can tell, and so you can't hide things from kids.
"It's better to tell them the truth than have them to create some monster in their minds that's much worse.
"So yeah, our kids knew that Henry had brain cancer. They knew that brain tumours kill people, and when the tumour come back, and we knew that it would kill him, they said, 'Is he going to die?', and we said 'Yeah, yeah he is.'"
The actor said that his children helped him cope with the loss as much, or if not more, than he helped them. "It was very humbling to learn. Your kid dying is just so awful... our kids helped us as much - or more, a very real possibility - than we helped them. So they were amazing, and are amazing."
Delaney also said that Henry died on Delaney's own birthday, sharing that he was glad that it happened on his birthday, rather than that of his other's son's, which is five days later.
"When we could see that Henry was dying... I remember thinking, 'Please don't let him die on his brother's birthday'.
"So there was, among all the other terrible feelings... the tiniest bit of relief that merely my birthday was totally destroyed forever, rather than the kid who was turning five. I hate birthdays now."
Delaney said that he initially intended the book to be "very angry... an unvarnished picture of parental grief" and that he "wanted the book to just ruin people's day or month", but that as he wrote, love took over and the end result was something much softer.
The Deadpool and Mission Impossible actor revealed five years on from Henry's death, he still struggles hugely and that he broke down crying last Sunday at the dinner table with his other kids around.
He advised people to physically be there for friends and family who have suffered the loss of a child and not just say, "If there's anything I can do..."
He stated, "You just need to go there. You know they keep the key under the flowerpot or whatever - go in, make a mediocre casserole dish, put it in the fridge, take their socks off and rub their feet, kick them out of their own house and lock the door behind them. Take care of their other kids so that they can go for a walk around the block, or lie face down in the park and cry, because that's what they need to do."
Kielty shared his own struggles with grief, referring to the untimely death of his own father when Kielty was a teenager and finished the interview by telling Delaney, "There might be a day that you might be able to celebrate a birthday again."
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