Ryan Reynolds shared a post on Facebook Thursday honoring 13-year-old Connor McGrath, a young Deadpool fan who passed away on Tuesday night following a three-year battle with cancer. In the tribute, Reynolds explains that the duo met when the Make-A-Wish Foundation arranged for McGrath to be the first person to see Deadpool. Thanks to a shared sense of humor, they quickly became fast friends.
“I’m grateful I got to orbit Connor’s world for a brief time,” the actor wrote. “Grateful for the pages and pages of hilarious texts between us. Grateful to his parents for allowing Connor to spend time with a foul-mouthed child in the body of a 39 year old.”
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He closed the post by saying an emotional goodbye to his friend. “I called Connor, ‘Bubba.’ And he called me ‘Bubba2,'” he said. “We met because he loved Deadpool. In a certain sense he WAS Deadpool. Or, at least everything Deadpool aspires to be; balancing pain, fearlessness, love and a filthy (filthy!) sense of humor in one body. I wish he could’ve stuck around a lot longer…See ya down the road, Bubba.”
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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com