Pablo Luna
A grieving mother, Liz Atkinson, is calling out to the public to help in recovering a stuffed elephant containing her son’s ashes. Liz and her husband Ande said the pet went missing during their trip to Disney World in April. The couple said they had always kept the stuffed animal with them since their son Gabryel died.
“Gabryel was given this elephant in the NICU and it was at every surgery/procedure (over 50) and hospitalization (too many to count) with him,” the couple wrote. “He slept with it every night and since his passing my husband and I have had it in our bed with us. His name is Bruce. Our son, Gabryel passed away before we could make it to Disney. For his birthday this year, we took our surviving son, Sebastyan, on the trip.”
The couple said the blued stuffed elephant named Bruce was brought along for their vacation – which started April 22 – in Disney Springs and Cocoa Beach. They said they returned home on May 1 to find that Bruce was missing and that it may have fallen off somewhere. Gabryel’s ashes were kept in a small bag placed in a pouch on Bruce’s back.
Liz said they had searched everywhere for the missing stuffed elephant without success, hence their decision to go public with their search. She said they have filled out lost and form forms on Disney and called on all the places they visited during their vacation, but Bruce remains missing. “I feel sick, struggling to sleep,” she said. “I’m desperate.”
The distraught mother said it was possible that the pet reached Disney Springs and possibly “fell out in the orange parking ramp there, somewhere at the palazzo…or if he made it into [Art of Animation], was potentially mixed into bedding that was changed by housekeeping.” She said she was certain of this because the elephant was not inside the bag they took into Disney Springs.
