A mother desperately searches for a missing stuffed elephant holding her deceased son’s ashes.
Liz Atkinson said Bruce the elephant came on a trip to Florida with the Iowa family. She posted on Facebook about the lost elephant on Friday, along with a request to help her find the toy. A small bag containing her son’s ashes was in a pouch on Bruce’s back.
“I’m sick, I’m struggling to sleep. I’m desperate,” she wrote.
Atkinson’s son Gabryel suffered from a chromosome 9 abnormality, she said. He got the stuffed elephant while he was in the NICU. Gabryel had it with him in more than 50 surgeries, procedures and hospitalizations before his death.
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“He slept in it every night and since his death my husband and I have had it in our bed,” Atkinson wrote.
Bruce the elephant was lost during a family trip to Florida, mother Liz Atkinson said. It belonged to her late son and held a small pouch containing his ashes. Liz Atkinson/Facebook
Gabryel died last year, just 16 days before his 8th birthday, Atkinson said. For his birthday this year, the family went to Disney along with their surviving son Sebastyan.
They were in Cocoa Beach and stayed at the Beachside Resort April 22-24, Atkinson said. Bruce the elephant joined the family on a parasailing excursion on April 24th. Sebastyan kept him on the boat.
“This is where the journey in my memory becomes blurred due to emotion and sadness,” Atkison wrote on Facebook. “Thinking back, I don’t remember Sebastyan bringing him back to our vehicle.” After parasailing, Atkinson did not see Bruce, although she thought the elephant was somewhere among her belongings along with her son’s ashes.
The family next went to Disney Springs and stayed at the palazzo in Kissimmee until April 25, Atkinson wrote. They stayed in Disney’s Art of Animation until April 30.
“When we got home on May 1st, I looked EVERYWHERE,” she wrote on Facebook. “Every bag. He is gone. I called each of the locations listed above and filled out a find form on Disney’s site. Nobody found him.”
Since posting her plea on Facebook, she has learned that cameras at the Cocoa Beach marina show her son carrying Bruce into the family vehicle, Atkinson said. When the car drove off, the stuffed elephant was not on the ground.
“I never thought in a million years that struggling with grief would affect my memory so badly that I would have forgotten it somewhere, and I went to great lengths to make sure it was always in a bag or in my arms, so that doesn’t happen. ” She wrote.
Atkinson is asking people to share her post to help spread the word. She has asked anyone with information to get in touch with her.
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