Sometimes there are rings more important than the wedding one. A moving story of a woman who lost a lifetime of memories when losing a ring.
The following story tells the life of a woman who lost a very special ring, the funny thing is that she never thought that having lost it would leave her a great life lesson. Dare to discover what type of ring is more important than marriage.
Last year after Christmas, when my boyfriend’s kids were at his ex-wife’s house, he and I went on vacation with my daughters to a sunny destination away from our separate homes in Montana. We have been together for years, sometimes we mix the lives of our children, sometimes we don’t, and we don’t feel the need (I think not?) To define our relationship with marriage.
On this trip, we stayed in an austere beach hut where every day I contemplated, not the sea, but four white bowls that were generously distributed along a wooden shelf above the kitchen sink. After another Christmas that resulted in bloated stomachs, the simplicity of those bowls marked a stark contrast to the mess she’d left at home.
By the end of our vacation, those bowls – never used, never partakers of any real life – had left such an indelible mark on my mind that just six hours after we returned I had already thrown away a dozen junk bags. and that was just the beginning. The image of the four bowls was my guide, but so was a phrase a friend used to say when I asked him if he needed another beer: "Need is a funny word."
Day after day, I threw more things until, while taking a break to walk the dog, I started to laugh at myself. I was behaving like crazy, throwing away everything we didn’t need, not because I had suddenly become obsessed with cleaning and tidying up, but because I had surgery scheduled for the next week and I was terrified. As a single mother who just can’t die, I was doing my best to distract myself from the risks that awaited me.
It didn’t matter that the chances of him dying during the operation were tiny; I was going to have a hysterectomy. It was just another way to ruthlessly dispose of an item I no longer needed. My mother had done it when she was 40 years old. I was 44 and his only daughter.
She passed away at 68, when I was 38, from radiation damage from her cancer treatment decades earlier. I wished I could talk to her about all of this, but more than anything, I was trying to keep busy. I had become my own bad joke. How did I not realize what I was doing?
In the end, the operation was a piece of cake and I returned to my normal life immediately. The following week, when I was walking my dog on a path near my apartment, I pulled out a ball for him to chase after. When I threw it into a neighboring field covered in two feet of snow, the only ring I used left my finger and disappeared.
I gasped. My mother had given me that ring and the only time she had taken it off was for the operation the week before. I couldn’t lose it.
I was afraid to move, so as not to stir up the snow, thinking that any indentation in the surface, no matter how small, could reveal the landing point of my ring. I called my boyfriend. I called the friend who was taking care of my daughters. The three of us simultaneously called half a dozen stores and got a used metal detector from a pawn shop.
My friend drove with my daughters to pick it up. It was after two in the afternoon; we only had a few hours of light left. While I was waiting for my friend to arrive with the metal detector, a squad of parents, children, and dogs arrived with cross-country ski equipment. Although I was too stunned to remember, I surely told them that I had lost a ring because I heard them wonder aloud if it was my wedding ring.
I did not answer them.
An older woman with another dog arrived and joined the ski group. He was speaking loudly as he asked what was going on, and I was protecting my snow from his dogs, longing that they would let me cry quietly. He was never going to find it.
When the skiers left, the woman came up to me and asked, "Is this your wedding ring?"
"No," I said, too bluntly.
A few minutes later, a man ran by, making eye contact in a way that made me think he might know me — it’s a small town — but I didn’t recognize him. He stopped running and asked me if I was okay. "You look distressed," she said.
"I lost my ring."
"Your wedding ring?"
"No! I’m not married". I did not hide my irritation.
I made him nervous. He was very kind. I was very sad. He left and I stared at the snow. No ring. Motherless. No husband. He didn’t even have a uterus! It would have been so easy to give up and feel sorry for myself. But actually, he was happy about the surgery. Actually, I love my life, my family, my boyfriend.
Why did the wedding ring assumption keep making me angry? When we were on vacation, almost everyone we knew referred to my boyfriend as my husband. When we were talking to another couple on the beach, he called one of my daughters "our daughter." Do we need to get married? I do not know. In general, as my boyfriend likes to say, I don’t need anything.
But he needed that ring.
The metal detector at the pawn shop was a useless piece of equipment with the batteries taped together, something I would have thrown away days before. My friend turned it on and nothing.
I was getting desperate and cold. I left my daughters and my friend tending the snow as I drove to buy a new battery and this time – another half hour of wasted daylight – the metal detector beeped and lit up. The metal detector needle did not move, but when we tested the machine by dropping a penny in the snow, it beeped again. The sun was going down, I was exhausted, but there was still hope.
It seemed impossible that this plastic trinket I was holding was capable of creating a miracle, but I took slow steps towards the field, sliding it through the snow. A crowd gathered: the skiers returned. My friend’s teenage son arrived with his friends. The kind runner had, in fact, run home, showered and returned in his car to see how I was doing, he was unable to forget how distressed I looked.
It wasn’t even that long – fifteen minutes? – before the detector sounded again. I was still skeptical; I found out that it was detecting the metal zipper on my boot. But the vague beep persisted in one area, and when I got down on my knees and poked my fingers in the snow, there was my ring.
I broke down in tears. I turned to show the crowd, mostly strangers. It seemed a bit strange to tell them the story of the ring, but by then, they too had invested some of their time.
"My mom gave me this ring when I was 20 years old," I told them. “She was diagnosed with cancer when she was 25 and told she had one year to live. She hadn’t even gone out on her first date with my dad. When they got engaged, their doctor told them he might have five more years to go. They got married anyway. On his fiftieth birthday, he threw a huge party and did not accept any gifts. He gave me this ring that day. Three gold bands engraved with his name, mine and my dad’s. He died eighteen years later. I’ve never taken it off ”.
Now a lot of strangers were crying.
I kept the detail of the operation – the one that had taken it from me for the first time the week before -; Before going to the hospital, I put it in a small box that I had given my mom decades before and then took back after her death.
I did not tell them how my boyfriend had taken me for the operation at dawn and that he had waited for me, then I had filled my prescriptions, I had returned home and had tucked me into bed. I didn’t tell them how he cooked for my daughters after school, got them ready for basketball practice, and looked after them while I couldn’t. Not how, when he asked me if I needed something, I replied, "Could you go get my ring?"
I did not talk about the fact that we are not married or explain that maybe I would like to get married one day, but I don’t need anything either. Both are true.
I didn’t tell you how my boyfriend recovered that box with the irreplaceable ring inside, came back to my room and handed it to me, or how I took the ring out and placed it on my finger.
It’s not a wedding ring, but I didn’t need to tell them that.
Need is a funny word.