A family loses a toy elephant that carried their son’s ashes during a trip to Disney

A mother is desperate to find a lost stuffed elephant with her deceased’s ashes.

Liz Atkinson said Bruce the elephant came with his family from Iowa on a trip to Florida. On Friday, she posted a message about the lost elephant on Facebook, along with a plea for help to find the toy. A small bag of her son’s ashes was in a pouch on Bruce’s back.

“I feel bad, I have trouble sleeping. I am in despair,” she wrote.

According to her, Atkinson’s son Gabriel suffered from an abnormality of the 9th chromosome. He was given a stuffed elephant while he was in intensive care. Before his death, Gabriel had more than 50 surgeries, procedures and hospitalizations.

“He slept with him every night, and after he died, my husband and I were in bed with him,” Atkinson wrote.

Gabriel died last year, just 16 days before his 8th birthday, Atkinson said. For his birthday this year, the family went to Dzna with his son Sebastian, who survived.

They were in Cocoa Beach and stayed at the Beachside Resort from April 22 to 24, Atkinson said. On April 24, Bruce the elephant accompanied the family on a parasailing trip. Sebastian kept him on the boat.

“This is where the trip gets hazy in my mind because of the emotions and grief,” Atkisson wrote on Facebook. “Thinking back, I don’t remember Sebastian taking it back to our car.” After the parasailing, Atkinson did not see Bruce, although she thought the elephant, along with her son’s ashes, were somewhere among their belongings.

The family then went to Disney Springs and stayed at the Palazzo in Kissimmee until April 25, Atkinson wrote. They remained at Disney’s Art of Animation until April 30th.

“When we got home on May 1st, I was looking EVERYWHERE,” she wrote on Facebook. “Every bag. It’s gone. I called every place listed above and filled out a form on the Disney page. No one found it.”

After she posted her request on Facebook, she learned cameras at the Cocoa Beach marina showed her son carrying Bruce into the family’s car, Atkinson said. When the car left, the stuffed elephant was not on the ground.

“I never in a million years would have thought that struggling with grief would impair my memory enough to forget it somewhere, and I tried very hard to always have it in my bag or on my arm to prevent that from happening,” she wrote. she

Atkinson is asking people share her post disseminate information. She asked anyone with information to contact her.