A Heart That Works

by Rob Delaney

The truth is, despite the death of my son, I still love people. And I genuinely believe, whether it’s true or not, that if people felt a fraction of what my family felt and still feels, they would know what this life and this world are really about.

And yet so many of the days, months, and years that followed are obscured by a fog. Grief drove a bus through the part of my brain where memories are stored.

I’d visited Tobias and Maggie a few months before he died, not long after he came out of the hospital. He and I went for a drive together on a warm, beautiful day and I gave him my spiel, which probably included my basic beliefs that depression is brutal and viciously hard, and that it’s A-OK to find it terrifying. One of the worst parts of depression is that in its cunning, it wholesale convinces you that it will last forever. But that, of course, would be impossible. That is, I suppose, what I’d say to anyone dealing with it. I said it to him: it won’t last forever because it can’t last forever because NOTHING lasts forever, even (and perhaps especially) feelings you WISH would last forever.

Reflecting on his physical therapy reminds me that I’m not a fan of the “fighting” metaphor for cancer. I don’t think you fight it, or beat it. The effort I saw Henry expend, again and again, at the age of one, under such duress, suggests someone who could beat anything that can be beaten. Cancer’s pretty much going to do what it wants. Should it come for me, I hope I’ll just ride the wave.