Colby Cave and his wife, Emily, were working toward adding a third member to their family before he died earlier this month.
The couple had planned a trip to Haiti to pursue the adoption of a child, Emily told The Athletic's Daniel Nugent-Bowman.
"Instead of celebrating our first anniversary, we thought, 'Let's go back and see if we find a kid that we'd love to be a part of our family,'" she said. "Unfortunately, we won’t be doing that."
Emily booked a trip to the Caribbean country in November but had to cancel when the Oilers demoted Colby to their AHL affiliate, the Bakersfield Condors, after which she said he felt terrible.
They were looking into a solution early in 2020 but had to postpone again when the Canadian and American governments both cautioned against traveling to Haiti due to protests there.
The adoption process can take years to complete, so they were trying to get the ball rolling, according to Nugent-Bowman. Emily wanted to give birth first, then adopt one of the opposite gender, before having a third. She wanted a child from Haiti because her father had worked at an orphanage and missionary facility there.
"I know Colby would want me to go back," she said. "When the time is right, I wanna go back for sure - just not necessarily to adopt anymore. That was a big plan in our future, kids and adopting."
Colby died at the age of 25 in a Toronto hospital on April 11, several days after undergoing emergency surgery to remove a colloid cyst causing pressure on his brain. He'd been hospitalized following a brain bleed and was placed in a medically induced coma following the procedure.
Emily, who turns 27 on Sunday, and Colby got married last July.
Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.