A 5-year-old Iowa boy lost a battle with cancer last week, but he’s winning hearts around the world thanks to a memorable sendoff.
As he battled a rare form of cancer called alveolar fusion negative rhabdomyosarcoma, Garrett Michael Matthias, a.k.a. “The Great Garrett Underpants,” composed his own obituary that’s as poignant as it is funny. There are superheroes, gorilla jokes, Legos, shoutouts to friends and family, and, in the middle of it all, an honest look at fighting cancer through the eyes of a young patient.
Under “the things I love most,” Garrett stated: “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.”
For “things I hate,” he noted: “Pants!, dirty stupid cancer, when they access my port, needles and the monkey nose that smells like cherry farts…I do like the mint monkey nose like at Mayo Radiation and that one guy that helped me build Legos (Randy).”
Garrett’s parents, Emilie and Ryan, told the Des Moines Register that the obituary came from questions they asked him as he fought the disease that would ultimately claim his life.
“We really tried to use his words and the way that he talked,” Emilie told the newspaper. “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.”
Indeed, the funeral looks like it’ll be something else.
“Funerals are sad,” Garrett’s obituary stated. “I want 5 bouncy houses (because I’m 5), Batman and snow cones.” He also said he wanted 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.”
Yes, a gorilla. The reason? So he can “throw poo at Dad.”
A celebration of Garrett’s life will be held on Saturday, complete with a ”symbolic Asgardian burial ceremony and fireworks.” A private burial of his ashes “will be held at a later time once his parents figure out how the hell to get his ashes made into a tree and locate a nature preserve so his tree resides in a protected area.”
The obituary concluded with some parting words from The Great Garrett Underpants: “See ya later, suckas!”
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