5-year-old boy writes own obituary before dying of pediatric cancer
Family members are mourning the death of a 5-year-old boy who lost his battle with pediatric cancer, but before he passed away and with the help of his parents, Garrett Matthias prepared his own obituary.
He wanted to tell the world just what kind of a kid he was. He was diagnosed with cancer nine months ago and died last Friday.
"What really bothered me was he always asked, 'Why am I always sick?'" mom Emilie Matthias said.
Those were words that broke Ryan and Emilie Matthias' heart for nearly a year.
"We never necessarily talked about his funeral, so we never had the conversation with him that he was going to die," Emilie told WPLG. "But we had a lot of conversations around it."
Garrett, a superhero fan and a lover of thrash metal music, was perhaps better known as Great Garrett Underpants. He was not a typical kid, and his obituary is reflection of that.
"When I read it, I was thinking 'Wow, sounds like Garrett just yapping at me,'" Ryan said.
Garrett detailed all the things he loved and all that he didn't. He hated pants and needles and the illness.
Garrett made also some final requests:
"No funeral, because those are sad," he wrote.
Instead he wants a party with five bounce houses, one for each year he lived, a visit from Batman, and his favorite treat -- snow cones.
The most unique request was a symbolic burial ceremony.
"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," Garrett told his parents.
Garrett's celebration of life will take place Saturday.
"We've cried oceans of tears in the last nine months, and I think this is one of the things that we can do to make his day," Emilie said.
The symbolic burial and his request for fireworks will happen at sunset.
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