Paying tribute. Nick Cannon shared a touching message that was dedicated to his late infant son, Zen, whom he shared with girlfriend Alyssa Scott.
“Still missing my little dude,” the Nick Cannon Show host, 41, wrote via Instagram on Friday, January 21. “His spirit and brightness were soo strong #Zenslight. ‘To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.’ Corinthians 5:8 [sic].”
Nick’s post featured a photo of him sitting with five of his children, including twins Moroccan and Monroe, whom he shares with ex-wife Mariah Carey.
“The whole family, we all miss you young king!” the comedian added in his caption. “Forever our angel.”
Nick revealed his son had died on December 7, 2021, after battling Hydrocephalus (a form of brain cancer) in an episode of his show that aired just two days later. “[Around] Thanksgiving, we had an interesting turn and the process sped up,” the Wild N’ Out star tearfully said on December 9. “The tumor began to grow a lot faster.”
“This weekend, I made an effort to spend the most quality time I could with Zen,” Nick recalled about how he spent his final hours with Zen at the beach. “I woke up on Sunday and [felt] like I wanted to go to the water, to the ocean. We had a chance to go to the ocean.”
Alyssa also spoke out about their child’s death the same day by sharing videos of their late baby boy via Instagram Stories.
“Oh, my sweet Zen,” she began her message. “I caught myself looking in the backseat as I was driving only to see the mirror no longer reflecting your perfect face back at me. When I close a door too loudly, I hold my breath and wince knowing a soft cry will shortly follow. It doesn’t come. The silence is deafening. These last 5 months we have been in this race together. We would hand the baton off to each other. You kept me going … We were a team, both determined to see it through.”
Later that week, Nick revealed he got a new tattoo of Zen in another episode of his show as part of the “Pic of the Day” segment.
“That’s actually my rib right there,” he explained at the time, showing a photo of the tattoo of his beloved son’s face. “Last night, I got the opportunity to go get a tattoo of my son Zen as an angel on my rib. I’m still all bandaged up.
The Drumline star then explained how the ink took several hours for the tattoo artist to finish: “It was a lot of pain but so well worth it … to forever have my son right here as my rib, right here on my side as my angel,” Nick added before thanking fans for their support.
“I’ve seen so much love, y’all,” the comedian said to his audience. “More love than I probably ever experienced. Even in the mix of a loss, I got to say ‘thank you’ to y’all.”