“I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
Cindy Crawford is opening up about the childhood death of her younger brother.
The 59-year-old supermodel, who grew up with three siblings, according to People, was just 8 years old when her younger brother Jeffrey died from leukemia at 3 years old.
Now more than five decades later, Crawford is using that experience to help raise awareness about one of the more unexpected symptoms that comes with the disease.
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“Before we knew he had leukemia, one of the symptoms of leukemia is you bruise super easily,” Crawford said during an April 25 appearance on the “Kelly Corrigan Wonders” podcast.
According to Mayo Clinic, leukemia is a “cancer of the body's blood-forming tissues, including the bone marrow and the lymphatic system.”
Common symptoms include fever, chills, fatigue, weakness, unexplained weight loss, swollen lymph nodes, frequent infections, excessive sweating and, in the case of Crawford’s brother, bruising easily.
As Crawford explains, her parents eventually learned of her brother’s diagnosis after a routine spanking.
"I know this sounds very, like, child abuse, but, you know, we definitely were spanked as kids," Crawford said to hosts Christy Turlington Burns and Kelly Corrigan.
"My mother, she would say, 'Go to your room, you're getting a spanking.' And that waiting period to your point was just like the worst,” she continued, per ABC News.
Crawford then recalls one of the spankings her little brother received from her father — which left an unusual handprint on her brother’s skin.
"You can't be hitting the kids that hard, you know, that's not a spanking,” she remembers her mother telling her father — who insisted that he “barely touched” him.
“And then later that week, we found out that he had leukemia, so I think that that was it,” Crawford added. “My dad... he never could spank again."
Crawford describes her brother’s death as ‘devastating’
While talking to Corrigan and Burns, Crawford said she “didn’t really feel” her brother’s death at the time.
“We knew he was sick, but we didn't really know what was going on,” she said — adding that she and her sisters spent most of their time with extended family while their brother was being treated in the hospital.
"I think when he died, obviously that was devastating for the whole family,” Crawford explains, per People. “I think for my mother, she was able and chose to really grieve properly.”
Crawford went on to praise her mother’s “strong faith” for helping her grieve and cope with the loss.
But as she previously explained, her father had a difficult time overcoming Jeffrey’s death.
In a May 2024 episode of Corrigan’s podcast, Crawford opened up about feeling “survivor’s guilt” after her brother’s death — which was a result of her father losing the only son he had.
"My dad wanted a boy, so the fourth was the boy. And I think that there was a lot of guilt…” she said in the episode, per Hola! magazine.
“We knew that my dad really wanted a boy, and we felt like, well, it should have been one of us," she told Corrigan. "It was so weird for years."
Crawford then revealed the one thing she wished her parents had said to her at the time.
“I needed to hear, 'Yes, we're so sad that Jeff died, but we're so happy you are here,’” she explained — though she never expected to actually hear it from them.
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“My mom wouldn't have known to say this, she was 26 years old and had just lost a child,” Crawford added.
