When

we moved here to London from Los Angeles nine years ago, I started doing the sitcom catastrophe. And we did two, the first two seasons back to back. And it didn't occur to me because I was going through kind of what you're talking about that I could say like, what if, yeah, what if we took six weeks off between the two seasons of television? That we both write executive produce and star in. What if we just like, you know, and and so we just drove right in and that was a very bad idea. And my wife said towards the end, when we were editing season two, she said, so, uh, do you have a second? Yeah. She said this last year and a half has been a waking nightmare. Uh, you have not been a present. You moved me here with a three year old and a one year old. And I was pregnant and I am incredibly unhappy and I'm going to divorce you unless you change the way that you work immediately. And I thought about it for a second and I said, okay. And began to set about to do that. And then days after that, you know, not even a month, Henry became sick. And then we found his tumor. And then of course, you know, another thing we haven't mentioned yet is that my beautiful young brother-in died by suicide one year before Henry died, right? So Henry's getting chemo in the hospital at Great Ormond Street Hospital. And I'm on the double-decker bus with my older boys. And when I say older, I do mean three and five. And they're like my lieutenants, you know? If I'm heading home from the hospital, my wife has tapped me out and is at the hospital. And I'm on the top of a bus with my boys. And my sister calls and tells me that her husband, my beautiful brother-in has jumped off a bridge in Boston and is dead. And so all these things happening were, you know, just staggering. And my sister and I are, are the only two in our family I'm five years older and she's a girl. I'm a boy. So like we never really, there was never rivalry or really fighting. We're just always like super pals, you know? And so it was so weird to in the space of 15 months have those things happen. You

both have unspeakable problems to people who don't know how to speak about it.

Yeah.

And then you're both these cast out into outer darkness together.

Like you wish you'd wish just one of those things that happened. You know, if you got to pick like, do you want both to happen or just one? You would pick one, but that isn't what happened. They both happened. And so now she and I have a means of communication that is, you know, insane.

And

then our poor mom, it took me a minute to extend for the, I don't know, shock waves or mushroom cloud of sympathy to reach and include my mom, because she's like one step to roof. But because it's both her kids that happened, that's so incredibly awful, you know, so that she's still trucking and has been so amazing for both of us. I would really like to salute her resilience and beauty of spirit.

When we think about the shape that our families and our friends and our lives become, I mean, there's not a lot of Mother's Day cards that are like, as the years go on together, we will find a, trying to think of a lot of rhymes for together, just on the fly. Tears will something. I'm just thinking of though, the kind of ways we all have to change, learn to change roles over the course of each other's lives and loves to be like, I know how to be, I know how to be your mom. I know how to take care of these functional primary needs. And then it's like, Oh, I need to learn to be your friend. So I can let you go to college. Oh wait, I need to learn to let you have a career that is, Oh wait, now I need to learn how to be around catastrophic grief. I cannot possibly solve in a way that is not annoying. My

mom told me about someone that she knew not terribly well. It was sort of a, there was like a dinner party where there were people who weren't like best friends or whatever, but you know, whatever. Yeah. A dinner party. And um, one woman was asked, Hey, yeah, how are you doing? Cause she kind of seemed down. And her answer was, well, my daughter is in the fucking ground. So I'm not really doing that well. And my mom being like, Oh, and this was before, like my mom wasn't in the blast zone. So she didn't have to immediately, she wasn't, but she overheard that. And she knew that that woman's daughter had died and was just like, I'm really glad that it wasn't the one who had to respond to that because who would be right? Um, I mean me, I'd be like, yeah, what the fuck? You know, um, I'd be like, why don't we go out? Let's just get, you know, instead of like shooting BB guns at beer bottles, let's go throw other beer bottles at beer bottle. Let's just throw beer bottles at cars. Let's that will make us feel better. And, and so, but then my mom recently told me, she was like, yeah, I remember that, you know, and then, and then everything that happened to our family did. And I was like, Oh yeah, she's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Daughters in the ground. Not doing, not doing too good. How are you? How's your evening going? Do you like to rice pilaf? You know, that,

that Tig Notaro opening in her, she was like, I have cancer. How are you? How's everyone doing? I have cancer. I thought that cheerfulness of that just spectacular. Slayed me when I think about it. Yeah.

She's so wonderful. Take up over. I'm

thinking about all the responses to terrible things that I did not love. Yeah.

I

wonder if we could things to say things not to say for a bit. Okay. Things to say. I really like it when someone says some version of like, I'm so sorry that happened to you. Yeah. Like the two you kind of gets me very emotional because it's not like I'm some generic person in the world. I do really like when someone's sorry for this specific reason.

Yeah. I mean, and questions I love. Yeah. If my son died at the age of two years, nine months and you learn that you are, I promise, wondering why. Wondering how. questions, you know? And to people who are like, well, I didn't want to bring it up. You're not bringing it up. You think I'm not thinking about my son who died. Who's dead body I held. You think he's not here with me right? You think because he's dead. I have four sons. One of them is dead. But he's still receiving a quarter ish of my parenting energy. I mean, I'm sure the percentages change between kids every day. That's

a lovely image.

He's my son. Yeah. I'm his dad. That'll never change. Where is he? I don't know. That, that I don't know. Which is good. I wouldn't want to know, you know, I want wonder for when we die, you know, the idea like, Oh, you know, I know what's, I know what's going to happen.

Come on. I'm an answer factory. If you ever want to know, I'll just kind of slip in the secrets. I think you probably like bossy people who just don't ask random crap and show up with lovely things. I hated it when people said, uh, is there anything I can do? Oh, yeah. I mean, you could come up with something to do and then show up then do it.

Oh, you could not give me a job by asking me that

question. Yeah. How to fit you into my like now disappeared life. You

just bring a mediocre slash not even good casserole and you put it in my fridge. You know what I mean? Uh, you come over, you say you're going to be here with my children for a couple hours. Will you go for a run or go walk in the park or whatever? Go find a weird corner in the park and lie down face down and cry into the soil and have snails drink your tears. That's much better. Also, kids, again, a nice parent with their kid, a good friend of mine was sitting there and their daughter asked about my son Henry. And who's Henry? And I said, who's my son? And he died. And she just went, what? He died? And I was like, yeah. And she said, and he's, he died and he's dead? And I was like, yeah. Why? You know, being like he got a he had a brain tumor, which is like cancer in your brain. And like, that's so much better. Because every adult is that curious, you know, and so fucking ask. So I like those, you know, or people who were like, are you are like Jesus Christ, I can't even fucking imagine. You know what I mean? Profanity. That's its best use.

That's where it's best. I mean, I feel a deep calm. I had this weird response to, I was just starting, I was starting cancer and I was starting lint. And that was my like 40 days of F bombs. I work in a very religious context. And I was like, this is the new me. But the new me felt very, it was, I mean, they have those studies of like, if you put your hand in cold, freezing cold water and you're allowed a million expletives, the people who are swearing the whole time can keep their hands submerged for longer. And I thought, that feels right. the worst things that people say. Just

like the question was how are things, things are very bad. We've recently learned that Henry's cancer has come back and he's going to die. Oh yeah. My grandfather had a brain tumor. He got better but... They always

do so well in the end.

Yeah. And so that's bad. I hate that for you so much. Another one, somebody said, how are you doing? Not great, you know, first Christmas without Henry's coming up and I would prefer to just go into a medically induced coma just for six weeks and skip it and but then our new son had been born because my wife I mean that's this is a not even one podcast this is a series my wife was pregnant when Henry died right I mean if you can even imagine that and so we had a new son who arrived before Christmas. And this person said, yeah, but, you know, first Christmas with the new guy, like, as if like, like deflecting the fact. And for me, the thing is, it's so weird because like, the arrival of our new son in no way addressed Henry's absence by the same token, Henry's death did not lessen our joy at this beautiful new fella who'd entered the scene. So it was almost like when you see like an estuary where like freshwater and saltwater and like one is blurry and one is clear, you're like, they're not, they aren't intermingling. You know what I mean? Like they're right next to each other. And you might feel them at the same time, but they don't. Like the arrival of of number four did not lessen the nightmare horror of losing Henry, nor did Henry dying make this little nugget any less delicious. And you know, and I was very worried. I thought, well, I don't love anymore. Because it's all my heart is destroyed. So I'll know I'll go through the motions with him. Like I'll tell him I love him. I'll dress him and feed him. But it's his experience is gonna suck, you know. And then the second he came out, I was like, give me a, give me a, give me a, give me a. You know, I just wanted like rubbing him all over my face and head and licking and biting his ears. I still bite my the amount of time that my kids' ears spend in my mouth.

Oh, I know. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. We had to make rules like we signed contracts with an eye about like, we had to make. Yeah, there's so many biting rules. It's the only sort of like constitution of that relationship is like number one,

under

these conditions. I will eat you up.

When you

think about what, cause Henry's pain I imagine was always on your mind, but then his absurd, gorgeous joy and personality, it feels like you've got a lot of strong feelings about joy and puppies and what makes life really beautiful and good in the middle of suffering.