As Jimmy Buffett’s fans mourn his death, his younger sister is revealing the two siblings were diagnosed with cancer at about the same time four years ago.
Buffett died Friday, Sept. 1, from Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare type of skin cancer. He was 76.
Soon after his illness was discovered, his sister Laurie Buffett McGuane says she found out she had pancreatic cancer.
“Jimmy and I became closer because of our cancers. We talked before and after our scans,” McGuane, 74, told People. “We shared a club that nobody wants to join. I am thunderstruck that Jimmy didn’t make it.”
Buffett was a source of inspiration when she had surgery at Duke University and underwent treatment in Montana, McGuane told the magazine. She tried to continue with her life "the same way Jimmy has done,” adding she is now cancer-free.
McGuane recalled that when her brother found out she had cancer, he brought the whole family to Montana to be with her. Buffet loved Montana, she wrote on Instagram.
As the singer’s own cancer progressed in recent months, he was devastated that he had to stop performing, McGuane said.
“Jimmy wanted to perform the shows that he had to cancel,” she told People. “He brought joy to so many. I am very emotional now. When Jimmy was in the world, I felt safe. Even though I have (my husband), it will be a whole new thing for me to be without my brother Jimmy.”
McGuane, who called Buffet “a phenomenal person,” wrote on Instagram that she and her sister Lulu were with their brother just before he died and reminisced about their childhood. One favorite memory was Buffett making sure she had chocolate milk when she came home from the hospital after she broke her leg in 8th grade.
The Instagram post included a vintage picture of the siblings as young kids and a photo of her hands over his.
“I told him I’ve known him longer than anyone on the planet. He smiled with those twinkling blue eyes and squeezed my hand,” she wrote.
