Basketball player Lamar Odom is the ex-husband of reality star Khloe Kardashian, and before they became a couple, he survived a major tragedy in his life.
Jayden, the third child he had with his ex Lisa Morales, was born on December 15, 2005, and passed away just six months later. With Lisa, he has a daughter Destiny (22) and a son Lamar Junior (18), and in his memoirs “Darkness To Light,” he described the family tragedy.
Lisa’s mother moved in with them after Jayden was born to help them with their three young children. On the morning of June 29, 2006, his wife went to Jayden’s room to check on him, and she noticed that the boy was lying on the bed and noticed on the sheets that he had not even moved.
As she said, it was strange for him to sleep on his stomach, but she did not think it was something strange, and she went to the kitchen. As soon as her mother asked her how Jayden was, she started to panic and returned to his room.
“His face was a dark blue. He wasn’t breathing. Liza screamed hysterically. Liza’s mother, a registered nurse, immediately took Jayden”, Lamar said, adding that they immediately called an ambulance. The basketball player was on a trip at the time, and his wife called him to tell him something was wrong with their son.
He didn’t understand what she was talking about at first and thought something had happened to their older son. He immediately returned home and went to the hospital. Just moments after he arrived at the hospital, a doctor approached them and said she was sorry and that she had experienced the same tragedy.
“Crib death. That was the first time I had ever heard that term. I didn’t know what it was. Jayden had died from sudden infant death syndrome”, Lamar wrote in the book. The basketball player pointed out how long it took him to come to terms with everything.
“It just didn’t make sense to us. How could our baby just die in his crib? This couldn’t be a real thing. I was stunned, numb, almost emotionless. I couldn’t move”, Lamar says, adding that he only cried for the first time after three years.
A few years later, he divorced Lisa and began a relationship with Khloe Kardashian. They got married in 2009 and appeared several times in a reality show that follows her family. The couple even had their own reality show called “Khloe & Lamar.” Lamar was hospitalized in 2015 due to drug and alcohol problems, and a year later, he and Khloe officially divorced.
Read Also: Reality show stars who destroyed their careers in seconds
