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[Written 5/1/14, never posted]
Tuesday, 19 January 2016 09:02 pm"No. No, No Please, I'd Rather Stay Out Here. What's—What's That? Lilacs? No. No, It Couldn't Be. It's Two Weeks Early. Guess I—Guess I Always Wanted To Rush The Lilacs."*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
When she died, all she left behind was a small silver ring.
It almost fit my little finger, so I took it to a jeweler to have it resized. (It was the same jeweler we took both rings to to have them engraved.) The girl who helped me warned that stretching it could break the ring’s pattern. I told her it didn’t matter, the pattern was already broken, I just needed to wear the ring.
And I wore the ring. I lost it twice, and thought I lost it one other time. It frightened me when it happened, I cried. But I still wore it, because you don’t put something you love in a box unless it’s dead.
So I wore it. It clicked against my own ring, and when I took them off, I always put the little ring inside the big one, to protect it.
Yes, I took them off. We both took them off. She wasn’t even wearing hers when she died; her hands had been cold and it kept slipping off. (Should that have told me something, her hands being cold? Are cold hands a harbinger of death?) We didn’t play silly games like acting as though taking off the rings was a betrayal of some kind. Sometimes my ring would hurt my hand; sometimes it would be so cold, our fingers would shrink and the rings would want to slide off. We’d take them off for safekeeping.
But mostly, we wore them.
Mostly, I wore them.
Until yesterday morning, when I woke up and the little ring was gone.
I stared at my hand and thought, Why did I take it off? Because it seemed that in my sleep I had taken off the little ring.
I stripped the bed. I searched around the bed. I looked in the car and drove to the grocery, just in case it happened earlier than I thought.
I wondered if she had come to take it back, to take it away from me because I don't deserve to wear her ring.
I cried.
I talked to my cousin, about how hard it was, that my house is such a mess and that my eyes aren’t working that well right now—one cataract surgery down, one to go, no glasses to help me see the world, making searching just about impossible.
My cousin, whose house is as big a mess as mine, commiserated.
And that’s when I realized that, while the ring is not on my finger, it is in my house. I’m not wearing it, but I am living with it.
My ring is lonely, but my mind is quiet. The little ring is free.
When she died, all she left behind was a small sliver bird. For nearly ten years, I held the little bird close to my heart, until yesterday it flew away.
*Sam Crandall
-:- -:- -:- -:-
When she died, all she left behind was a small silver ring.
It almost fit my little finger, so I took it to a jeweler to have it resized. (It was the same jeweler we took both rings to to have them engraved.) The girl who helped me warned that stretching it could break the ring’s pattern. I told her it didn’t matter, the pattern was already broken, I just needed to wear the ring.
And I wore the ring. I lost it twice, and thought I lost it one other time. It frightened me when it happened, I cried. But I still wore it, because you don’t put something you love in a box unless it’s dead.
So I wore it. It clicked against my own ring, and when I took them off, I always put the little ring inside the big one, to protect it.
Yes, I took them off. We both took them off. She wasn’t even wearing hers when she died; her hands had been cold and it kept slipping off. (Should that have told me something, her hands being cold? Are cold hands a harbinger of death?) We didn’t play silly games like acting as though taking off the rings was a betrayal of some kind. Sometimes my ring would hurt my hand; sometimes it would be so cold, our fingers would shrink and the rings would want to slide off. We’d take them off for safekeeping.
But mostly, we wore them.
Mostly, I wore them.
Until yesterday morning, when I woke up and the little ring was gone.
I stared at my hand and thought, Why did I take it off? Because it seemed that in my sleep I had taken off the little ring.
I stripped the bed. I searched around the bed. I looked in the car and drove to the grocery, just in case it happened earlier than I thought.
I wondered if she had come to take it back, to take it away from me because I don't deserve to wear her ring.
I cried.
I talked to my cousin, about how hard it was, that my house is such a mess and that my eyes aren’t working that well right now—one cataract surgery down, one to go, no glasses to help me see the world, making searching just about impossible.
My cousin, whose house is as big a mess as mine, commiserated.
And that’s when I realized that, while the ring is not on my finger, it is in my house. I’m not wearing it, but I am living with it.
My ring is lonely, but my mind is quiet. The little ring is free.
When she died, all she left behind was a small sliver bird. For nearly ten years, I held the little bird close to my heart, until yesterday it flew away.
*Sam Crandall