Eli Thompson — the boy without a nose has died, at the age of 2

Eli Thompson — the boy who was born in 2015 without a nose due to a rare condition — has died, at the age of 2, in his home state of Alabama.

“We lost our little buddy last night,” Eli’s dad, Jeremy Finch of Mobile, Ala., posted on Facebook Sunday, along with the link to an article about th
e boy’s death in AL.com. “I’ll never be able to make sense of why this happened, and this will hurt deeply for a long time.”


He continued, “But I’m so blessed to have had this beautiful boy in my life! He finished his race a lot earlier than we would have liked, but it was God’s time to bring him back home. I’ll forever look forward to seeing him at the gates of Heaven waiting on me to give me another one of his famous fist bumps! I love you little man. Rest in peace with my Father.”

Eli was “very, very bright and happy, always smiling and giving everybody fist bumps,” Finch told the website, adding that he communicated by using baby sign language, and that he’d started speech therapy at home with a speaking valve. “His favorite sign was ‘cookie,'” he said. “He touched a lot of people’s lives. A lot of people cared about him.”