Elizabeth Warren's Brother John Dies After Cancer Battle: 'Tell Someone How Much You Love Them'

Elizabeth Warren/instagram

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is mourning the death of her older brother John Herring.

Warren shared the news on Friday that Herring died on Thursday after a battle with cancer. Alongside a photo of herself and her older brother on Christmas in 1958, Warren explained that his health had been deteriorating over the past week.

"He was at home, and he'd been strong enough to watch the football game on Monday (Dallas Cowboys, of course) with his son Mark," she wrote. "But he started going down sharply on Wednesday, then died on Thursday."

Warren, the youngest of four siblings, remembered Herring as "the sweet one who was soft-spoken, shy, ready to help. He never seemed to understand how much he had going for him."

"When I was little, he would carry me on his shoulders, even though he had to bend way down to make sure he didn't crack my head on the door jambs," she continued. "He joined the Air Force to fly planes like big brother Don Reed, but after basic training he was too tall to fit in the cockpit, so he spent his years of military service on the ground in California, Texas and Morocco."

RELATED: Elizabeth Warren's Older Brother Dies of Coronavirus: 'It's Hard to Know There Was No Family to Hold His Hand'

Drew Angerer/Getty Sen. Elizabeth Warren

She also reflected on Herring's marriage to his wife, Barbara — who died 14 years ago.

"Whenever he talked about Barbara, it was clear he thought he'd won life's biggest prize," she explained, adding: "He'd play the records they had danced to and look at the pictures he kept of her on his mantle. I hope that John is now with his beloved Barbara."

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She concluded, "This has been a hard year and a half for so many people. The same day John died, another 2,744 people died from COVID. Families all across our nation have lost brothers, cousins, friends, parents, children — the list is too long to absorb. Almost no one is left untouched. The ache gets deeper, but so does the urgency to tell someone how much you love them — loudly and directly."

Warren invoked her brothers repeatedly while running for president, before she ended her bid in March 2020.

A key part of her stump speech was that two of her siblings were Republicans but they had found common ground with her; and the three appeared in a video for her campaign.

Last year, Warren's older brother Don Reed died from COVID-19. He was 86.