Christine Dawood is sharing her heart-wrenching tale about the aftermath of a devastating tragedy. Nearly three years after the OceanGate Expedition vessel imploded with five passengers onboard, including Christine's husband, Shahzada Dawood, and their son, Suleman Dawood, she recounted the devastating way she received her family's remains following the Titan submersible tragedy.
"We didn't receive the bodies for nine months," Christine told The Guardian in an interview published on April 25. "When I say bodies, I mean the remains that were left. They came in two small boxes, like shoeboxes."
"There wasn't much they could find," she added of the remains, noting they were tested by the United States Coast Guard. "They had a big pile they couldn't separate, all mixed DNA, and they asked if I wanted some of that, too. But I said no, just what you know is Suleman and Shahzada."
As June approaches, marking the three-year anniversary of the tragedy that also claimed the lives of Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Stockton Rush just 90 minutes into an expedition to reach the Titanic wreckage, Christine revealed that she's kept both her husband's study and son's room exactly as they left them.
Suleman's 9,090-piece Lego Titanic model remains untouched in a glass display in her kitchen. "People are always a bit shocked to see it," she explained. "But what was I going to do? Break it up? Hide it away? Suleman put all those hours in. He'd been fascinated with the Titanic since we went to a huge exhibition when we lived in Singapore."
Amid her mourning journey, Christine—who currently lives in Surrey, UK, with her 20-year-old daughter—shared that she's "learned" to give her grief "attention." But it isn't easy.
"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," she admitted. "And after a while, I can put the grief away until the next time it gets too much."
"I've worked a lot on my grief for Suleman, but I'm only now starting to grieve for my husband," she added of her son and husband, who died at ages 19 and 43, respectively. "Publicly, they are always put together, but they are two different relationships. Two very different pains."
