It’s a sentimental story to be sure, almost too cinematic to be believed. But sometimes life really is like a movie, and in the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, sometimes we do get to write our own ending.
In this case, the protagonist is a ten-year-old girl named Colby who was dying of a rare and vicious form of cancer. The ending she wanted was simple enough: she wanted to live long enough to see the new Pixar movie Up. But by the time the movie opened, she was too ill to go out to the theater. So a family friend started cold-calling Pixar and Disney, hoping she could somehow make the little girl’s wish happen before it was too late. She finally managed to reach an actual human at Pixar and explain her situation. And the very next day, a Pixar employee was knocking at Colby’s front door with a DVD of Up — it’s still running in theaters, remember — and a sack of related swag.
It was Colby’s last day on Earth; she died seven hours after the movie ended. As fate would have it, she couldn’t even open her eyes to actually see what was on the screen. But she could hear it, and her mom described the images to her.
I hope it made her happy. I can think of worse ways to spend your final day.
The article I linked above is worth reading in its entirety, by the way. If you can get through it without tearing up, you’re not human.
Hat tip to Jaquandor for bringing this to my attention…
OK, I think every blog on the planet has linked to this story (mine).
If you ask me, Colby’s story is more heart wrenching than the movie, and that’s saying something…
It’s one of those stories that seems tailor-made to go viral, isn’t it?
The thing that really gets me is that tidbit about her being unable to open her eyes. All she wanted was to watch a movie, and in the end she couldn’t even actually watch it. I was pretty composed reading the article up until that point…
Yeah, tell me about it. And she couldn’t open her eyes because she was in too much pain. The thought of what her mother went through – describing each scene in the movie while she lay there in pain (especially the beginning, when the guy’s loses his wife before fulfilling their dreams). I’m surprised the mother could keep describing…
I imagine Colby’s mother persevered because it’s what Colby needed her to do. And then later she probably got really, really drunk or otherwise fell completely to pieces. At least that’s what I would’ve done…