Nick Cannon has honored the memory of his late son, Zen, during a recent visit to a children’s hospital.
The multihyphenate stopped by the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) on Saturday (December 23) to put on a special Christmas display called “Zen’s Light Holiday Hospital Special.”
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Visitors were treated to everything from Christmas decorations to trains and special sweets, while Cannon himself dressed up as Santa Claus to help spread holiday cheer.
The event was put on by Zen’s Light Foundation, whose aim is to help families with pediatric healthcare and grief counseling for those that lost a child. Check out the special video below.
Nick Cannon remembers son Zen with special Christmas visit to children's hospitalhttps://t.co/3Yh0bOWXIApic.twitter.com/LSkxuUsnDd
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) December 24, 2023
On December 7, 2021, Nick Cannon revealed that Zen had died at just 5 months old. He first made the revelation on his eponymous talk show.
Cannon then shared the emotional footage from the show to his Instagram account and quickly garnered support from fans and peers alike.
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“I always noticed he had a cough and so I wanted to check it out,” he said in part. “He had this interesting breathing and by the time he was two months, I noticed he had this nice sized head too — a Cannon head. We didn’t think anything of it. But I wanted to take him to the doctor for his sinus and breathing. We thought it would be routine.”
That routine visit turned into a nightmare for both Cannon and Zen’s mother, Alyssa Scott. Doctors informed them Zen had fluid building in his brain and discovered a malignant tumor. The baby had brain surgery and a shunt to drain the fluid, but the treatment didn’t work.
“Ultimately, it was cancer in the brain and the tumor began to grow a lot faster,” Cannon continued before getting choked up. “And so we knew that time was … this weekend I made a valid effort to spend the most quality time I could spend with Zen. We woke up on Sunday — I got to spend the weekend with him — and I woke up on Sunday and was like, ‘I feel like I want to go to the water.’ We got a chance to go to the ocean.”
Since then, Nick Cannon has honored Zen in many ways, including with a tattoo in his honor in 2021.
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“This is a week where I’ve seen so much love y’all, more love than I’ll probably ever experience,” he said about the new ink. “Even in the midst of a loss, I gotta say thank you to y’all.”
Cannon then debuted his new ink, which showed Zen portrayed as an angel. The detailed tattoo was done on Cannon’s ribs so his son could be forever by his side.
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“It was a lot of pain but it was so well worth it,” he said of getting the piece. “I enjoyed every moment of the experience to forever have my son right here as my rib, right here at my side, my angel.”
