5-Year-Old Gets a Superhero Funeral After Battle with Brain Cancer
Five-year-old Brayden Denton loved comic book heroes from the time he was 3, and watched the Spider-Man movies "over and over." After he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer a year ago, he always had a superhero with him at treatments. And at his funeral this week, superheroes served as his pallbearers.
Brayden, from Kentland, Indiana, passed away May 8 after a fight with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) that included 30 rounds of radiation treatment.
His family members, including uncles and cousins, dressed up as Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman and the Incredible Hulk to honor him with the funeral his mom says he would have wanted.
"The whole time I saw them carrying Brayden, he was probably up there going, 'This is so cool,'" Staci Denton told the New York Daily News. "That was his world."
"It was hard, but I did it for him," Braden's uncle Cory, who dressed as Thor for the procession, told WLFI. "We went to the Superman movie with him and he was dressed up as Superman. I watched all the Iron Mans with him."
Brayden's mother donated the tumor for medical research.