When I
reached into the back of my closet and tugged on the tweed coat sleeve as I did
regularly, I heard silence instead of the comforting jingle of my rings. Then I
felt an explosion in my head as I frantically searched the contents of my closet.
I swept the hardwood floor beneath my clothes hoping the rings had fallen out
of hiding somehow, but I knew better. I
prayed, I cried and then I picked myself up off the floor and vowed I would not
let the disappearance of my rings defeat me either. I have survived too much in
the last few years.
It turns
out that my engagement and wedding rings were stolen from my house along with
several other pieces of jewelry shortly after I filed for divorce. Though I ceased wearing the diamond rings
when I finally admitted my marriage was over, I did not expect to part with
them and certainly not in this painful way. I had hoped that someday our boys
would give them to their significant others and the tradition would continue.
My ex-husband proposed with a beautiful ring he spent hours shopping for on-line. As fate
would have it though, my Bubbe died as I began making plans for our wedding.
There was no question that we would return his ring and I would wear the rings
my Zayde gave to my Bubbe decades earlier in a small Nebraska farming town where they fell in love. My Bubbe's rings had a beautiful history and they were my
inheritance, but the rings were also exquisite in my eyes and I was proud to
wear them. (Perhaps that was why I had to endure this lesson).
Diamonds may last forever, but nothing is really ours in this life. I hope the person who has the rings is enjoying them now at least half as much as I did during the seven short years that they were mine. Thankfully I have the precious memory of my Bubbe wearing the dim and dirty rings while she rested in bed towards the end of
her life. And I will always remember the exhilaration of opening the jewelry box my father
sent me from Texas after she died to discover the same rings, freshly
cleaned and shimmering in all their glory.
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