INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – A Missouri couple is desperately searching for a missing necklace, because of what’s inside; it contains the ashes of their baby girl.
Daysha Tailia Sky Flaxbeard was to be the couple’s first child. In April, after suffering a dog attack a couple of weeks earlier, Megan Mabry learned at 20 weeks she’d have to deliver a stillborn baby.
“You don’t expect to lose your child. We get to miss out on her first steps. Or her first laugh, or her first drawing. So we don’t have much to share with her,” Mabry said holding back tears.
The couple sought to cherish her memory every way they could. The 9-inch, 13-ounce baby’s ashes were placed in a bear for them to hug, and mixed in with matching tattoos on their arms.
“It has her name, heartbeat and her hand and footprint like actual size on it,” Mabry demonstrated.
The ashes were also placed in necklaces – Megan’s a butterfly, father Dale Flaxbeard’s a heart.
A couple weeks ago, Dale had to go Saint Luke’s East Hospital, requiring him to take the necklace off. He says he was anxious about the hospital visit.
“I accidentally dropped it, but I knew I picked it up. I put it in my pocket, then went to leave, because my hands were shaking too much I couldn’t put it on,” Flaxbeard explained.
They’d go to Summit Pizza in Independence afterward, before returning home where they discovered the necklace with the ashes inside was missing.
“Every little piece counts. So its really heartbreaking to think someone might have possibly took it and not even know that our daughter’s ashes are in it. So it feels like I’m missing a part of her,” Mabry said.
That silver heart pendant with a clear gem on the silver chain is tiny, about 1 inch tall and wide. In just 24 hours a Facebook post about the missing necklace with the inscription “always in my heart” was shared more than 700 times.
“A piece of her is here and its always going to be here,” Flaxbeard said pointing to the ashes-injected tattoo.
“But it doesn’t hurt any less that even though I still have this I wouldn’t want my pendant back or I wouldn’t want to always have that piece of her heart by me.”
