‘It should have been one of us’: Cindy Crawford opens up about guilt she faced after brother’s death at 3

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Cindy Crawford has spoken up about the struggles she faced after losing her younger brother, Jeffrey, who was only three.

Jeffrey died due to leukemia, as reported by the Daily Mail.

Cindy Crawford says her father ‘wanted a boy’

During the podcast ‘Kelly Corrigan Wonders: About Your Mother’, Cindy mentioned her parents — John Crawford and Jennifer Sue Crawford-Moluf — and said, “I am not sure they definitely wanted four kids, but they wanted a boy.”

She revealed, “My dad wanted a boy, so the fourth was the boy.”

However, her brother’s death in 1975 resulted in “a lot of guilt” for her and her sisters.

Cindy Crawford speaks up about ‘survivor guilt’

“I think that there was a lot of guilt. There's that survivor guilt of the other kids, especially because we knew that my dad really wanted a boy, and we felt like, well, it should have been one of us,” the model reportedly mentioned.

Cindy then went on to point out how important it is to speak about death and its after-effects.

Crawford urges for openness about death and grieving

She said, “We don't talk about death in our culture, and we don't talk about what you say to someone when they lose someone.”

The ‘Fair Game’ actress continued, “A lot of people just kind of ignore it, or they don't want to bring it up because they don't want to upset the person. And for me anyway, I don't feel like that's inviting an opportunity to cry, laugh, share or whatever.”

She further explained, “Just recently, I was doing some coaching through COVID, I actually had time to do real work. And I realized that one of the questions the coach asked me was something like, ‘What did you need to hear at that time that you didn't hear?’

“And I realized - and my mom wouldn't have known to say this, she was 26 years old and had just lost a child - but I needed to hear, ‘Yes, we're so sad that Jeff died, but we're so happy you are here.’”

Recalling the time after losing her brother, Cindy told the podcast, “I remember when I went back to school after my brother died, not one person said one thing to me, no kidding, except for one kid who was like, ‘I saw in the paper your brother's dead - is that true?’”

“I was like, ‘Whoa.’ It was so in your face, but he didn't know what to say. We were in third grade,” she stated.

Crawford helps children in coping with death and grieving

Elsewhere during the podcast, the mother-of-two shared what she taught her children about death.

“My kids have both lost friends, sadly, through car accidents and fentanyl and all the crazy stuff that these young kids are experiencing now. They're always like, ‘What do we say?’ And I try to give them words,” Cindy added.