The stuffed animal was one of the gifts Liz Atkinson had received at her baby shower that went untouched, sitting in an Iowa neonatal intensive care unit still in its box.
A few weeks later, a nurse opened it — a plush teal elephant with red ears that Atkinson’s friend jokingly called “Bruce.”
Atkinson’s 2-week-old son, Gabryel, who was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality, was still in the NICU during his baby shower in May 2014. So, to prepare for when their newborn would be strong enough to play, Atkinson and her husband had brought a few of the shower gifts, including the elephant soon-to-be “Bruce,” to the hospital.
The name stuck — and so did the stuffed animal, who from then was always laid on Gabryel’s stomach or tucked beside him in bed through dozens of surgeries and hospital stays until he died last year at the age of 7. After Gabryel’s death, the elephant stayed with the Atkinson family. With a red heart stitched on his belly, Bruce was a comforting reminder to Atkinson, her husband, Ande, and their second son, Sebastyan, of the boy they’d loved.
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But last month, Bruce went missing.
The Atkinsons had taken the stuffed animal, with a small bag of Gabryel’s ashes placed in its back pouch, on a trip to Florida for what would have been the boy’s ninth birthday. When Atkinson realized last week that the toy had disappeared, she retraced her steps, checking the family’s luggage, calling everywhere they’d visited and, on Saturday, posting online in hopes that spreading the word would help bring Bruce back to her in Burlington, Iowa.
She’s still searching.
“I never in a million years would have thought that I would misplace the one thing that’s been on every trip with us for eight years, that’s the number one priority on every trip to pack,” Atkinson said.
When she learned of her son’s chromosome abnormality in 2014, her doctors didn’t think she’d make it to her third trimester. And they warned that if she was able to deliver the baby, they weren’t sure how he would be affected because the abnormality was so rare.
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Despite the unknowns, Atkinson and her husband made a promise: If they had their son, they would fight with him until he decided “it was time to be done.” And if that happened, they’d “learn to live with it.”
After their son was born in April 2014, the family was in and out of the hospital. But Gabryel, who was developmentally delayed and nonverbal, was the “happiest kid you’d ever meet,” Atkinson said. He liked to be “the jokester of the party,” always giggling when he was around people, she said.
Gabryel used a device to communicate. One of the keys he pressed most often — “Are you kidding me?”
Over the years, Gabryel had more than 50 medical procedures. Atkinson and her husband brought Bruce along for each one.
In 2015, when Gabryel was 9 months old, he was set to have a skull reconstruction surgery. The medical staff told the Atkinsons to practice calming behaviors with Gabryel ahead of his recovery, when his eyes would be swollen shut for about three days.
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Bruce was what worked best.
The elephant could vibrate, which helped calm Gabryel. For about 70 hours after the procedure, the Atkinsons laid Bruce on Gabryel’s stomach and took turns staying awake as their son healed.
One of them had to switch the toy back on every 15 minutes when the vibration stopped.
“He would only calm down when Bruce was playing,” Liz Atkinson said. “And so we were just up, down, up, down all the time.”
The Atkinsons replaced Bruce’s batteries multiple times. After a few years, they’d used Bruce so much that the animal stopped vibrating. So they bought the same toy, took out its vibrating mechanism and placed it within Bruce. They later replaced the mechanism again.
When the Atkinsons weren’t at the hospital, they packed up their minivan and went on trips, with Bruce in tow each time. They made sure to stop at theme parks because Gabryel loved to ride roller coasters — the same way he loved to be pushed fast in his stroller, the wind brushing past his face as he raised his arms up.
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The family took those trips during periods when Gabryel was healthy enough to travel. In 2019, he was able to start kindergarten, something Atkinson thought might never happen. Her son had been able to do so much more than she thought possible by then that she held off on referring him to the Make-A-Wish Foundation that grants wishes to critically ill children, thinking it would be better when he got older.
Share this articleShare“I thought, oh okay, I can maybe even start to envision his future and dream for the future,” she said.
The family started the Make-A-Wish process for Gabryel two years later, when their doctors had told them it was probably “the beginning of the end” as his health declined, Atkinson said.
She and her family thought Disney World was the perfect ask because it combined so many of Gabryel’s loves — dressed-up characters, roller coasters and being around people.
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But at the time, travel wishes weren’t possible because of the pandemic. As the Atkinsons waited, Gabryel’s health continued deteriorating. He was having trouble digesting food. He had multiple procedures and hospital stays over the following year.
During one of the stays, Gabryel used his device to tell his parents: “I don’t like this.”
He pressed the key repeatedly.
“He just was communicating to us that he was done,” Atkinson said. “And so we decided that it was time to get palliative hospice involved and to follow through with what we said we would do.”
It was time to learn to live with it.
In the days after her son died, Atkinson kept Bruce in her arms during every meal, trips to the grocery store and in bed at night. Bruce had become a part of her family and, with Gabryel gone, the elephant was a piece of her son that she could hold onto.
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“I’m so used to my arms being full that, in an instant, them all of a sudden being empty was very bare for me,” she said. “So, I carried Bruce.”
Although the Make-A-Wish Foundation does not grant wishes if recipients die, the Atkinson family decided to make the trip on their own last month — to visit the places Gabryel didn’t have the chance to. They packed Bruce with them.
Inside the longtime companion, Atkinson placed a bag with a small portion of her son’s ashes.
Atkinson, usually a meticulous packer, felt overwhelmed in Florida as they went from city to city, hotel to hotel, along the route they’d planned for Gabryel. The grief, she said, clouded her mind.
When she got home on May 1 and realized Bruce was gone, she felt “helpless.”
“It didn’t feel like I lost my son again, but I felt a very familiar feeling,” Atkinson said. “I felt sick.”
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She hunted through the luggage and searched every crevice of their car. She went through every place the family had stopped as best as she could in her mind and called each one, asking about their lost and found. Finally, on Saturday, she posted about Bruce on Facebook, hoping for clues about his whereabouts.
The post has been shared more than 16,000 times. People who live in Florida have gone to look for Bruce. Others had the same elephant toy and offered to ship it.
On Monday, Atkinson heard from an employee at a marina who said their cameras showed her son Sebastyan carrying Bruce off a parasailing board and back into their car.
Staff at the last hotel they stayed at promised to do a scan of the room they were in once it is vacant.
In the meantime, Atkinson places her faith in the rising online shares, praying that they will help her post reach the Facebook feed of someone, somewhere who knows where her family’s beloved Bruce is.
While she awaits updates, Atkinson has been telling herself that if Bruce isn’t found, it just means he’s still on vacation, hopefully on the beach, having fun like he always did with her family — especially Gabryel.
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