Titan submersible widow reflects on search and life after loss

On June 18, 2023, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, boarded Titan, a submersible operated by OceanGate and bound for the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic Ocean. Christine Dawood gave up her seat so her son could join her husband on the journey and waited with her daughter for their return on the support ship, Polar Prince.

A little less than two hours into the descent, Titan lost communications with its support ship and authorities were alerted when the submersible failed to resurface at its scheduled time later that day. A massive search effort was underway, calling in the Coast Guard, deep-sea ROVs and U.S. Navy resources.

In her new memoir, Ninety-Six Hours: A Wife and Mother’s Desperate Search for the Lost Titan Sub, Christine Dawood tells the harrowing tale of crisis, loss and moving through grief with the help of her support systems.

“We left London as a family of four,” Dawood writes in the prologue. “And we returned as a unit of two.”

The book, released on May 12 ahead of the third anniversary of the fateful event, takes readers along the grueling 96-hour saga from the disappearance of the submersible on June 18, 2023, to the discovery of Titan debris on June 22, confirming the submersible was lost due to an implosion that instantaneously killed everyone onboard.

“I watched them embark on their journey together—their last journey—never suspecting that everything from now on would be defined as either ‘before’ or ‘after,'” Dawood wrote.

Dawood writes about the helplessness, panic and fading hope of waiting aboard the Polar Prince as search crews raced against what officials believed was a limited oxygen supply.

The hour-by-hour account is broken up with flashbacks to happier memories of the family like how Dawood and her husband met, their cross-cultural love story—she’s British and German, he was Pakistani—and various family milestones and traveling around the world with her two children.

Dawood said the book started out as a means of catharsis – working through her grief by journaling, writing down notes as they came into her head, dictating into her phone while on afternoon strolls, anything to move the busy thoughts from her mind to the page.

At some point, those musings and memories were edited into a story. Dawood decided to publish this book not only to share her perspective on this international tragedy, but to share who her husband and son were.

“I wrote the book in order to show that there are real people behind those headlines, with real feelings, with real families behind them, with their quirks and ups and downs,” she told Newsweek.

Dawood, a psychologist by trade, is used to working with people who have PTSD. But she never thought she’d need to use the very same tools she gave clients to cope with the loss of her husband and son in such a tragic and public way.

The breath work and mindfulness were helpful. But they could only go so far. Ultimately, the only way to navigate this situation was to focus on what she could control and what she couldn’t.

“I didn’t have any control over the rescue search, I didn’t have any control over them not being found, but I could consciously decide on how I react to it,” she said.

As the search was ongoing, Dawood was stressed. But the calm environment around her helped ease tension. From the ship’s crew to the dive and rescue team, she said everyone was professional and knew how to stay calm during a crisis. It also helped that Dawood turned off all notifications on her phone to block out the constant news coverage and social media discourse about the incident that captured the world’s attention. The environment created a sort of safety bubble that allowed her to keep her sanity amid the nerve-racking rescue efforts.

“I did that on purpose,” she said. “It wouldn’t have been good for my mental state at that point to add that layer, it was stressful enough.”

There is so much anger, regret, confusion and sorrow that come with losing loved ones in such a manner as this. But through her writing, Dawood doesn’t harp on the negative, but rather remembers the good.

She describes her son Suleman as playful, loving and curious. At 19, Dawood said he was just coming into his own.

“He was not even ashamed, even as a teenager, for me to go to school and pick him up and give him a kiss on the cheek in front of his friends—that’s unheard of at that age,” she said. “He was very family oriented and just loved people around, he was an extrovert and he loved being with the family, being with friends, exploring and he loved being with his dad.”

His father was the more adventurous of the couple, Dawood said. Shahzada was smart, had a thirst for knowledge and a calling to explore. Suleman and Shahzada were a team, dreaming of their next adventures.

“We all know how [the story] ends, but in a way, I wanted the people to get to know Shahzada and Suleman in a way that they wish they wouldn’t have passed,” Dawood said.

Even with all the tools and experience helping others overcome mental health struggles, Dawood’s journey forward after such a tragedy wasn’t easy.

Dawood is familiar with the circle of grief, cycling through sadness, heartbreak, anger and denial. The public nature of their passing meant she couldn’t grieve in private. The persistent news cycle churned out reports and requests for comment, keeping the mourning on a recurring cycle. Until one day, Dawood decided she no longer wanted to stay sad or angry.

“First of all, it won’t bring them back—I mean, if anger would bring them back, I would go out in the garden right now and scream,” she said. “Accusing and throwing around angry words won’t bring them back either.”

She turned her self-proclaimed stubbornness into resilience, refusing to drown in her agony and continuing to live her life to the fullest for her family. Her story is not one of anger or hatred or regret. The book, instead, chooses to focus on love, forgiveness and acceptance.

“We never know how we actually react in a crisis unless you’re in it,” she said. “You might have an idea of how you’d react, but sometimes there are things that really surprise you about yourself.”

In these moments, Dawood said she relied on the angels in her life—friends, family, professional mental health support—who love and help her every day. She said that as humans, we are not meant to go through hardships alone. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but for Dawood, overcoming the loss of a child takes an entire city.

“I find it’s unfair to people who want to help me to be in this angry, nagging phase, because they’re here for me and I think they deserve respect,” she said. “They give you their time, they give you their love, they listen to you, they’re taking time out of their day to be there for you – and I think the least I can do is treat their time respectfully. Community is very, very important.”

Christine Dawood knows that life will never return to how it was before. But today she’s focused on how to build a life after.

After such a loss, Dawood felt that she lost a bit of her identity as a wife and mother. But through this process, she has found new ways to move forward.

Ultimately, Dawood hopes her story can inspire others who are undergoing immense loss to turn their grief into a motivation to keep living and do good in the world.

“What gets me up in the morning now is I’m starting a healing center for trauma and loss in the U.K. and I’m in the process of getting that up and running,” she said. “That’s now a goal, because I have been helped so much now, I want to give back and I want to help others.”