with this ring – part 2
If you read the Blog Friday you saw the tale of the gifted wedding ring. Here now, this Labor Day, come three updates:
One – I incorrectly identified the young couple from Arizona as Amy and Alex. It’s Abby and Alex. I don’t like making factual errors when I write anywhere – unless my pal Milky Dent and I are just making stuff up – and especially not in this Blog. I apologize to Abby and Alex, and to my readers.
Two – In fact, as I reported, I did find my ex-wife’s ring in the bottom of my travel bag and I did put it on and it did feel good there on my ring finger – twirlable, comfortable, lovable even. But only for a while. By bedtime that night I had taken it off my finger and placed it on the table next to the computer. When I woke Saturday I took the ring and put it back in the bottom of my bag. It’s not mine, and that’s where that ring belongs. So I have been ring-less since Saturday morning, and I cannot say how many times I had a few seconds of panic in the ocean both Saturday and Sunday that my ring had slipped off into the water. A part of me no longer there.
But….
Three – Here’s a happy ending. I ran into the lifeguard, my friend Brad, in his motorized chair Sunday morning and the first thing he asked was if I’d got my ring back. I held up my empty hand and said no, why ?, and he said someone with a metal detector had showed up and discovered Alex’s ring and turned it in. I texted Abby after a bit and told her what I’d heard, and a few minutes later Abby texted me back and said, yes, it was true, and Alex had his wedding ring. I’m sure wearing it right then. And they were in the car on the way back to Arizona, she wrote, and when they get back they’re going to put mine in the mail and send it back to me.
I guess I’ll say where it belongs – my wedding ring on my left-hand ring finger – and any reader can decide for themselves what they think about that. Crazy to still wear it? Delusional? Childish? Such a romantic?
Boy, I hope all of those are true. And the Platters song you had to pass by to get to the lingo here today. It’s always been a favorite of mine, and what it expresses is as real for me today, sitting here at the keyboard, as it was any time during the last 11-plus years.
How can me still loving someone so special be anything but right?