Cindy Crawford: 'My Brother's Death Taught Me About Loss'

The runway beauty's sibling, Jeff, lost his battle with leukaemia in 1976, at the age of three, and in a new episode of Oprah Winfrey's indepth interview series Oprah's Master Class, she recalls how her family first dealt with her brother's diagnosis.

She says, "I think when my parents first told us that my brother was sick, we didn't really understand what it meant. They didn't use the word cancer."

Jeff's cancer went into remission after months of radiation, but it returned.

Crawford insists her brother understood what was happening to him, even if she didn't - at the age of eight.

She continues, "My mother said she found him sitting in his room. He was sitting at his little table, and she said, 'What are you doing?' And he said, 'I'm praying.' And she said, 'What are you praying about?' He said, 'So that when I die, you'll be OK.' As a mom now, I can't imagine hearing your child say that."

Crawford admits she found solace after her brother's passing because he had come to terms with his death.

She reveals he insisted he wasn't coming back for a new series of treatments when he discovered he was ill again: "He said, 'I'm not doing that'. He's three years old, so they're all like, 'OK, sure,' and the day that he was supposed to go back to the hospital, that's the day he died. There's some sense of completeness and peace that comes with knowing he knew that and he decided he was done fighting."