5-Year-Old Boy Writes His Own Obituary Before Passing Away From Cancer
What do you do when mortality itself threatens the ones you love? Some people turn to despair or drink, trying to lose themselves in psychological or chemical comforts.
Others find their solace in art. I can’t help but remember Johnny Cash’s heart-breaking ode “We’ll Meet Again” or Ryan Green’s video game “That Dragon, Cancer,” which focuses on his infant son’s fight with cancer.
No matter how people confront their death, they usually do so with a somber sort of tone. But one little boy from Iowa recently faced his demise with a giant, cheeky grin on his face.
Five-year-old Garrett Michael Matthias had a mouthful of a name. But he also had something far more sobering that sounded even more complicated: alveolar fusion negative rhabdomyosarcoma.
To make a long, complicated medical description short, alveolar fusion negative rhabdomyosarcoma is cancer — a really nasty one. It tends to attack soft tissues like muscles.
It doesn’t seem to be inherited, although researchers think there are some genetic events that can cause it to happen. However, they know without a doubt that it’s a truly terrible disease.
Garrett survived for nine short months with the illness. Yet when he passed away, he left behind an obituary that’s just as likely to leave you smiling as sobbing.
First, you have to know that Garrett liked superheroes. Liked them a lot. Liked them so much that he gave himself his own superhero name: The Great Garrett Underpants.
In his obituary, he cited Batman, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk and Cyborg as some of his favorite fictional protagonists. He also said that he wanted to be a boxer when he grew up.
Garrett wasn’t shy about discussing death. In fact, he gave very (ahem) detailed instructions as to his burial.
“I want to be burned (like when Thor’s Mommy died) and made into a tree so I can live in it when I’m a gorilla,” he said. Gorillas seemed to be a big interest in Garrett’s life.
Pictures on Facebook show him admiring an ape at the zoo while wearing a Make-A-Wish Foundation t-shirt. And he said that, when he died, “I am going to be a gorilla and throw poo at Daddy!”
As far as Garrett’s favorite things went, he scattered the serious in with the silly. “The things I love the most: Playing with my sister, my blue bunny, thrash metal, Legos, my daycare friends, Batman and when they put me to sleep before they access my port.”
Yet don’t think that the five-year-old didn’t realize the sadness of his situation. He cited “dirty stupid cancer, when they access my port (and) needles” as things he hated.
Still, he ended the obituary — or, should we say, his parents who transcribed it from his descriptions ended it — with a cheeky send-off: “See ya later, suckas!”
“We really tried to use his words and the way that he talked,” his mother, Emilie, told the Des Moines Register. “Garrett was a very unique individual.
“What I really didn’t want was for his obituary to be ordinary and to have a really sad funeral. We’ve cried oceans of tears for the last nine months.”
It looks as though the funeral will be anything but sad. Per Garrett’s wishes, on July 14 there will be “5 bouncy houses (because I’m 5), Batman, and snow cones” in Van Meter, Iowa.
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