Honoring HER sun, CYRUS CARMACK-BELTON

Cyrus Carmack-Belton was funny. Not just regular funny — Chris Rock funny, as one of his teachers remembered him. Quick. Sharp. Curious. The kind of child who could break the tension in a room with one line and leave people laughing before they even realized they needed joy.

He was smart, too. The kind of smart that asked questions bigger than his years. One teacher remembered him asking, with all sincerity, whether his teacher had gone to an all-white school in the 1960s. That was Cyrus — playful, but paying attention. Smiling, but thinking. Young, but already trying to understand the world around him.

His catechism teacher, Maya Beckley-García, wrote that “Cyrus is an absolute joy to have in the classroom.” She described him as sincere, kind, playful, upbeat, and deeply capable. She wrote that his understanding of complicated ideas was impressive, and that his family should be proud of him.

His mother, Nicole, remembered the light of him plainly and powerfully: “To know him is to love him.” She wrote about his charismatic energy, the smile that could melt your heart, his pranks, his roasting skills, and the way he kept everybody on their toes. She called him her Cyrus Monroe and prayed for God to guide and protect him.

His  dad, Troy,  remembered a moment that says so much about Cyrus’s heart. When asked to kill a centipede, Cyrus refused. He said the centipede would die — and if he died, he would go to hell for killing it. So Troy got a spoon and rescued the centipede instead.

That was Cyrus.

Funny enough to make grown people laugh. Curious enough to ask hard questions. Tender enough to spare a bug. Loved enough that his absence still speaks.

Cyrus did not deserve to die that way. He deserved more birthdays, more classrooms, more jokes, more questions, more chances to become every good thing already living inside him.

We remember Cyrus with love.