Story highlights
Laney Brown, 8, has leukemia and doctors say she will die soon
She asked to meet singer Taylor Swift and to hear Christmas carolers at her home
On Friday she had a video chat with Swift
Saturday night, for one hour, people packed the street and serenaded her
She loved music and dancing.
Laney loves music. Loves to dance, loves Taylor Swift, loves Christmas carols.
Her dying wishes were to meet country music superstar Taylor Swift and for some people to come by her house for a night of caroling.
On Friday – her birthday – Laney and Swift video-chatted through FaceTime, a software application that allows callers to see each other on Apple products.
Then, Saturday night, the singers came. At first it was hundreds of people, then thousands. Then it was about 10,000, CNN affiliate WFMZ reported.
She was too weak to go to the window, but heard the wonderful music.
“I can hear you now!!! Love you!” she said in a Facebook post that showed a photo of her lying in bed with a breathing mask – and two thumbs up.
Laney was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia seven months ago. Last week doctors told her family that she had 70% cancer cells in her blood. She came home from the hospital Thursday.
So two days later people came from all over. Her dance team was there to honor her through one last number. Even Santa showed up.
Many of the singers held back tears.
“I can’t even express how I feel,” Krysta Rebe, who has a daughter Laney’s age, told WFMZ.
It was only an hour of singing, but it lifted the spirits of everyone who jammed the block.
On Facebook one woman wrote that she had seen and taken part in a miracle.
“As much as I want that miracle to be saving the life of an 8-year-old little girl, Laney, the miracle was an 8-year-old little girl teaching an entire community, town, city and the whole country the true meaning of Christmas,” one participant, Marianne Franken, wrote on Facebook.”
Laney’s parents issued a statement Thursday thanking the public for its support and asking for privacy in the difficult days ahead.