The “slush” remains of crew members aboard the doomed OceanGate Titan Submersible were given to loved ones in “shoeboxes,” according to the wife and mother of two of the victims.
The submersible, en route to observe the remains of the Titanic, tragically imploded in June 2023, killing the five people onboard in the depths of the ocean. Victims included Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.
“The Titanic was claiming another five people, right?” Christine Dawood, the wife and mother of the two victims, said in an interview with the Guardian. “And the age of my son was a huge thing. Another reason why the press latched on to this, I think. If it had been five grown men, it might not have been as juicy.”
She was supposed to be on the vessel but gave her spot to her son, because he really wanted to go. She told the outlet she has continued to cling to advice given her by a member of the Canadian Coast Guard as she moves forward in life.
“A very experienced woman with blond hair — I forget her name — gave me the best advice I’ve ever gotten: ‘Hindsight won’t help you, so don’t fall into that trap. Just because you know it now… you didn’t know it before.’ I’ve always remembered her telling me that,” she said, explaining that her son “wanted to go and I was happy to give up the seat.”
“I was happy for him to make memories with his father,” she said. “I can’t change that.”
Speaking more of her grief three years after the horrific tragedy, Dawood said her son’s room and husband’s study remain the same as they were.
“I have learned to give the grief attention,” she said. “So I go into Suleman’s room. Sometimes I find the cat sleeping on his pillow and I sit on the bed and let the grief come. And after a while I can put the grief away until the next time it gets too much.”
She revealed that she has worked on her grief losing her son but is just now grieving the loss of her husband, explaining that they were two very different relationships. She also told the outlet about the process of getting their remains back, waiting for them for nine months after the tragedy.
“Well, when I say bodies, I mean the slush that was left,” she said. “They came in two small boxes, like shoeboxes.”
The remains given to her were DNA tested and separated by the U.S. Coast Guard. She said she was offered part of a larger pile of mixed DNA from the accident, but she refused, explaining that she just wanted what she knew were her son and husband.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined last year that “faulty engineering” led to the implosion of the submersible. That same year, the U.S. Coast Guard released audio of the implosion caught by a monitor moored several hundred miles away from the site.
According to reports, one of the last messages sent from the crew to the support ship prior to the deadly implosion was “all good here.”
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