Nick Cannon’s Infant Son Zen Scott Dies of Brain Cancer at Five Months Old

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Nick Cannon and Alyssa Scott, who are mourning the loss of their son, Zen Scott Cannon.

On Tuesday’s episode of The Nick Cannon Show, Cannon dedicated a segment of his show to his youngest son, Zen, before sharing that he passed away of brain cancer at five months old. During the emotional moment, Cannon tearfully explained that he first noticed slight breathing issues in his son about two months after he was born in June of this year. He then quipped that he’d noticed his son’s head shape and initially chalked it up to resembling his own “cannon-head,” but wanted to get both things checked out by his son’s doctor.

It was then that he and mom Alyssa Scott learned baby Zen had excess fluid in his brain as well as a tumor and would have to undergo immediate surgery to get a shunt installed. Things seemed to be progressing smoothly up until the latter end of November, when things took a sad turn.

“Thanksgiving we had an interesting turn,” Cannon explained, while trying to fight back tears. “The process sped up and ultimately—if anybody knows how cancer is, it was cancer in the brain and the tumor began to grow a lot faster. And so, this weekend I made a valiant effort to spend the most quality time I could spend with Zen. So we woke up on Sunday—I got to spend the weekend with him and I woke up on Sunday and I was like ‘I feel like I need to go to the water.’ Close to the ocean, so we got the chance to go to the ocean. Usually on Sundays, I try to handle everything I need to handle with the family and then I fly back to New York, I rush back so I can be here for you all. But I wanted to make sure that I allowed the sun to rise and hold my son.”

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He tearfully continued:

“Holding my son for the last time. It was a beautiful setting. To even spend that whole day was interesting because even as I was holding him, I was still preparing my day as it normally went. To come back [and] to come here, you know, I didn’t know what it was gonna be. But even by the time I got into the car and was headed to the airport, I had to turn around. I turned around and not only did we get to see the sun rise but we got to see the sun set, too. I didn’t know how I was going to handle today. I didn’t know how, I just wanted to grieve with my family and people who love you. I didn’t wanna make it into any pageantry or any of that type of stuff so I kind of went back and forth on what I should do. But I felt like I was always talking about ‘you don’t go through it, you grow through it.’ You keep pushing.”

He concluded: “I have so much faith in the Lord, I have so much faith in God. People were often telling me I should pray for miracles and I did pray for the miracle. I prayed for the miracle of God’s strength and that’s why I’m here with you guys today. I know He puts the most and the heaviest weight on the shoulders of His strongest shoulders so I’m here to show that I can fight through this. I’m feeling it, I’m vulnerable, I’m open. But I’mma make it through. This is a special show dedicated to my beautiful son, Zen.”

We will continue to send our love, prayers and condolences to Nick, Alyssa Scott and all those who knew and loved baby Zen.