GEORGE TOWN (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - She died young and her donated organs saved eight people.
That sounds like the plot for an inspiring movie that will have the audience crying buckets. So Mark Kok Wah and wife Ariess Tan plan to do just that for their daughter Carmen.
They want to make the movie and set up the Carmen Mark Foundation to globally promote the nobility of organ donation.
"We will give all the rights and proceeds of the film to the foundation to make it sustainable.
"I am working on the script with someone now," said Mark.
He said the foundation would also be a charity to disburse funds to welfare homes and families with children who have arteriovenous malformation (AVM), which Carmen had.
"Carmen's AVM was severe. Children who have it can be saved, but the procedure is not cheap. We would like to help them through the foundation," he said.
Carmen died in 2015 shortly after arriving in Singapore armed with a scholarship to further her studies.
The Penang girl had an arterial rupture in her brain, fell into a coma for three weeks and died without waking. She was 18.
Though wracked with grief, her parents then immediately made arrangements for her organs to be donated. It was a wish Carmen had voiced when she was 16.
On Friday (Sept 15), Mark, 46, and Tan, 43, met Serene Lee, 37, the recipient of Carmen's heart.
They were overcame with emotion when they used a stethoscope to listen to Carmen's heart beating in Lee.
"For me now, I don't feel like my daughter is completely gone.
"I used to cry every night since she passed but now I feel better as Serene keeps in touch with us.
"I feel like Carmen is looking down at us," he said with a choke in his voice.
On Saturday, Mark and Tan brought Lee to the spot where they spread Carmen's cremated ashes, under the mid-section of the Sultan Abdul Halim Mu'adzam Shah Bridge.
All of them cried as they floated flowers on the sea below the bridge.
Just as they arrived, a large school of dolphins playing on the water surface swam in circles to within 3m of their boat.
