Mum’s Ring
How what is lost can be re-found.
At 18-years old my mom died of cancer. It was a long battle that ended with the rattling then quiet breath of death followed by the relief that someone you love has found the inevitable peace that awaits us all. It taught me many invaluable lessons I am still uncovering like arrowheads from a fight thought long ago fought.
This week I discovered another.
Last Mother’s Day, before I set off on a new adventure in England, the weight of missing someone who under all expectations should have an influential and active presence in my life but did not, came bearing down on me. My dad, noticing my sadness, took the time to read a few notes my mom had written before her death. Afterward, he went to a cabinet and fetched a silver ring etched with hearts. Simple and tarnished, he told me to carry it to remember her. And so I did. For weeks I carried it in the pocket of my jeans, occasionally fumbling it in my fingers like a loaded die. Eventually it came time to fly to England and I took the ring with me; a momento to keep close on the onset of adventure.
Upon landing, I traveled up north to the bouncing hills riddled with rock walls that are the Peak District. Here I gave the ring to the woman I loved; awkwardly explaining its significance — that it was because I loved her, it somehow made sense and it flattered her small hands better than it did my hairy ones. She accepted the gift wholeheartedly and from that day forward wore it everyday.
For the following weeks I watched as the tarnished silver regained its sharp reflection, the oxidation worn away to reveal the pure element underneath. Occasionally, she would take it off to wash the dishes or take a shower and I would find her in a state of panic scrambling through her purse or papers on the desk, trying to relocate its whereabouts.
Last week she went to southeast asia and keeping up with habit, took the ring with her. She texted me five days in, saying she really needed to talk. Panicking, I quickly booted up Skype expecting the worst only to see her in tears.
“I’m so so sorry,” she said. “But I’ve lost your mum’s ring.”
She had been swimming on the shores of Langkawi, a Malaysian island off Penang, and mid-stroke the ring had loosened off her finger and sunk to the bottom of the sea. She had looked for it for over an hour, pausing only to let the sand settle so she could again regain her search.
“I am so sorry,” she said again.
She cried and I told her it was alright, that these things happen and its not the end of the world. I said these things because they were the strong words my father had taught me, because I didn’t want her to feel worse than she did and I wanted to move along and not feel the rising knot in my throat. However loss and disappointment filled my head like lead and I couldn’t think or speak for a few long minutes. She gave me these with tears in her eyes and took out a shell she had found in the ocean. I couldn’t see it much, but it didn’t matter.
“I found this instead.” She held the golden orb in front of the camera. “It isn’t the ring but its beautiful.” She fingered it in her hand like I had the ring weeks before. “And I’m bringing it back for us.”
The rest of the day I spent avoiding and mulling over emotions like a prepubescent teenager. You would think grief, like anything else, is a learned emotion but it is not — it is a fresh experience every time, however methods of management can be built and from that tender lessons garnered. And through trust and forgiveness that’s exactly what was acheived, because I eventually realized what she was offering was exactly what the ring represented only in a new form, a form of mutual experience she was now offering back.
I often think of moments my mom won’t be present for: my wedding, the birth of my first child, that child’s first steps, the day I become a millionaire. It is certainly the times I find it hardest. And while the pair of them will never meet in this lifetime, and it is sad to lose my mom and her ring, there is an echo of something ethereal about it — like a parent giving their child away before slipping off into the blue waters of the Indian Ocean — represented anew in the simple gift of a shell from its shores.
