Saturday, June 20, 2009

California Girl Gets Dying Wish

While you're out trying to bang the next hot chick, I'm reminded of family, fatherhood, and how fleeting life really is....

Colby Curtin got her final wish.

The 10-year-old girl desperately wanted to see the new Disney-Pixar movie, "Up." But the cancer-stricken girl was too sick to go to a theater.

Thanks to a family friend who got in touch with the movie studio Pixar, an employee of the Emeryville-based company arrived at Colby's home with a DVD copy of the movie.

The girl died later that night.

Colby's mother, Lisa, said she had asked her daughter if she could hang on until the movie arrived.

"I'm ready (to die), but I'm going to wait for the movie," she said her daughter replied.

"When I watched it, I had really no idea about the content of the theme of the movie," Colby's mother told the Register. "I just know that word 'Up' and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven."

Colby, who was diagnosed with vascular cancer in 2005, saw previews for the film in April.
"It was from then on, she said, 'I have to see that movie. It is so cool,'" family friend Carole Lynch said.

But the girl's health began to deteriorate. On June 4, Curtin asked a hospice company to bring a wheelchair so that her daughter could go to a movie theater but the chair was not delivered over the weekend, Curtin said.

By June 9, Colby was too sick to go anywhere.

Another family friend, Terrell Orum, called Pixar. The message was received by Pixar officials, who agreed to send someone to Colby's house the next day with a copy of "Up" for a private screening, Orum said. The employee arrived with the DVD, stuffed animals of characters and other movie memorabilia. Colby was unable to open her eyes to see the movie so her mother described the scenes.

When her mother asked if she enjoyed it, the girl nodded, Curtin said. The Pixar employee left after the movie, taking the DVD, which has not been released. Lynch, who was with the family during the screening, said the employee's "eyes were just welled up."

Colby, with her parents nearby, died later that night.

Her mother said one of the memorabilia left by the Pixar employee was an "adventure book" based on a scrapbook that, in the movie, is kept by the wife of the main character.

"I'll have to fill those adventures in for her," Lisa Curtin said of her daughter.

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=415257&GT1=28101

1 Comments:

Blogger Erika Awakening said...

Thanks for being there for me in the middle of the night. I'm really touched, and struck by the synchronicity that you were actually awake when I texted. Kisses.

June 20, 2009  

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