Symbols of Love and Faithfulness

It was becoming clear even before Ken died that removing my engagement and wedding rings had morphed into an event.  Not that I did it very often, but sometimes when I was kneading dough or making a meatloaf, I would wrench them off and place them on the kitchen windowsill for safe keeping.  Convincing the bands to come off had gotten pretty difficult, thanks to the arthritis which has swollen my knuckles.  Even though I could still spin them easily, removal had turned into an excruciating exercise in persuasion.

Sometime within those first few months of widowhood, it occurred to me that maybe I ought to remove the rings, that perhaps it was wrong to signal to others that I am a married woman.  But keeping them on helped me to stay connected to Ken, and to feel a certain protection from the outside world.  The rings broadcast that I belong to someone, I matter to someone, and these thin bands of gold felt like a buffer from danger when I was feeling very vulnerable.  And in some ways, I still feel married.  After all, neither of us have broken the vows we made that day: “I give you this ring as a sign of my love and faithfulness.”         

We bought our wedding bands at the same place Ken had purchased the engagement ring:  The Van Scoy Diamond Mine, a discount jeweler with a local branch.  I can’t remember if they were the cheapest rings on offer, but if they weren’t, then they were the second lowest in price.  Then, we were just starting out and fine jewelry was an unaffordable extravagance.  Now, almost four decades later, the rings carry much more in meaning than they carry in monetary value.   

There was another widow on the Camino grief walk last fall and I noticed almost immediately that she no longer wore a ring.  Widowed about a half year before me, I asked her when she had decided to take it off.  She said she couldn’t remember, but that it had just seemed like the right thing to do at some point.  In my case, after realizing recently that they had become a permanent fixture, I decided that they had to go, more to prevent a potential crisis if I was injured or needed an MRI, than to satisfy a feeling of readiness to declare my change in marital status.   

So a month ago I gave it one last try at home: I soaked my hand in ice water, then covered it in soap, and on a second try, oil.  These measures were enough to painfully remove the thin band of the engagement ring, but the wider wedding band wasn’t convinced.  I slowly coiled dental tape around the finger like I saw on-line, and then carefully uncoiled it: the ring slowly lifted, but it would go no further than the bottom of the unyielding knuckle and I realized that it was time for an intervention.

I had toyed with the idea of wearing Ken’s ring and mine together on a necklace, but since mine had to be broken, I would need the help of a goldsmith.  A friend recommended Black Sea Jewelers (www.blackseajewelers.com) and I showed up the store and explained my plight to Christina.  She made a quick examination of the situation and then used a tiny sort of ratchet saw to slowly slice through the gold, creating a spray of dust on the counter.  After a minute or so the cut was complete and she gently pulled the ring over my knuckle.  She told me that she had once created a similar pendant from rings for a widower and we talked briefly about her design idea: bend my ring into a heart and insert it into Ken’s band, then attach the stone from the engagement ring.  It sounded like a good plan and her confidence allayed my reluctance to leave those three precious objects in her shop.

While I waited the few weeks for her to forge her craft, I was left to adjust to the strange feeling of a barren finger.  I keep going to touch the pair with the thumb of my left hand, a habit I started when Ken gave me the engagement ring almost 38 years ago.  My initial thought is that I have lost them, and I feel a split second of panic.  And then I remember. Not lost, just somewhere else.  Like those early months without Ken, having to remember over and over that he is no longer here, no longer part of my life: the rings are no longer where they belong.      

Christina finished the pendant and I picked it up earlier this month.  It is a comfort to touch the rings again, to feel the metal that for so long was on our hands, now resting against my heart. Ironically, the new weight around my neck reflects the increasing heaviness of Ken’s absence.  Certainly I have mostly adjusted to the day to day of life without him but that doesn’t keep me from missing him more and more as the weeks elapse.  We still have a relationship of sorts, I keep his portrait next to the couch where he used to sit in the evenings, and I talk to his smiling face about my struggles, or what is on the TV, or happy thoughts I want to share with him.  As our relationship has changed so drastically, it makes sense now to let the symbols of that relationship morph into something new as well.     

I continue to reach for the rings around my finger, and then panic, and then recall.  I look at the ringless finger and it looks like it belongs to someone else’s hand.  But I guess in some ways I am someone else now.  I wasn’t ready to take the rings off, just as I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my best friend.  But so much of life is beyond our control and when things change, we work to adjust to those changes.  We strive to understand whether and how old things will fit in our new reality.  Those rings were very small pieces of our life together but being able to adapt them demonstrates one more way that I am settling in.