After 5-year-old Brayden Denton lost his battle with a brain tumor, his family in Indiana, decided to honour him by appearing at his funeral in costume as the super heroes he loved.
It’s the heartbreaking image that’s causing tears across social media: the funeral of 5-year-old Brayden Denton, who was given a superhero’s sendoff in Newton County, Ind., with his favorite characters serving as pallbearers.
Brayden died on May 8 after a battle with a brain tumor, and his mother Staci Denton couldn’t think of a more fitting sendoff for her boy than to surround him with the heroes he loved so much.
“The whole time I saw them carrying Brayden he was probably up there going, ‘This is so cool,'” Denton told the New York Daily News. “That was his world. That’s what he would have wanted.”
Brayden was laid to rest with the help of Batman, Superman, Thor, The Hulk and his most favourite character, Spiderman.
His uncle Cory, who was dressed as Thor, said that while it was very difficult, he did it because he knew that’s what would have made Brayden’s day. “We went to the Superman movie with him and he was dressed up as Superman. I watched all the Iron Mans with him.”
Brayden suffered from a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer that strikes children called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG. The disease kills 90 percent of the children diagnosed with it within 18 months, according to The Cure Starts Now Foundation.
His mother donated the tumor to researchers so we hope that he will be able to save other lives.
