My Second Mother's First Wedding Ring ...

She passed away in 2000. While cleaning out her dresser drawer I found a slim platinum band engraved with the initials "IMT to FK 3/10/46". The sight of it stopped me in my tracks and I sat on the edge of her bed marveling at its simple beauty. Engraved on all of it's surfaces with a delicate herringbone pattern, it sparkled as if it were studded with a million brilliant lights. It looked as if it had never been worn, and indeed it had not in more than 50 years. I knew about this ring but I had not seen it before. I didn't realize she might have kept it all these years. She divorced her first husband within a year of their marriage. She once told me he reneged on his promise to have children with her and she, an only child, could not imagine living a lifetime without children.

My second mother is how I refer to this woman who married my father two years after my birth mother's death. 'Stepmother' would never do justice to this mother who scooped me up at the age of 2-1/2 and called me her very own forever afterwards. She met my father on a blind date, fixed up by mutual friends. She said she fell in love with him after he introduced her to me. I guess we made a complete and compelling package, my dad and me, and we three became an instant family.

I slipped the ring onto my finger that day in her bedroom. It was as light as air and as lovely as my memories of her. I wore the ring for the next ten years, and each time I looked at it I was reminded of her.

Last week, after tossing a stick into the lake for my dog Moses to retrieve, I realized that the ring was gone. It had simply vanished. In that moment of loss I imagined that when I had flung the stick far out into the deep water for the dog, I had cast the ring from my finger as well. I felt an immediate and profound sense that I had lost a physical connection with my mother. My brain told me that it was futile to think I could find the ring under the water, and I sat by the shore thinking fanciful thoughts to comfort myself ... maybe a fish will swallow the ring and one day I will catch the fish and the ring will come back to me; if it is meant to be mine, the ring will return; maybe I am no longer needy of physical reminders of my mother....

My finger was naked for a week and many times each day I missed the physical presence of the ring. I still felt it's ethereal energy circling my finger and I mourned its absence. Many times I told myself that I was experiencing loss and that I must learn some constructive ways to deal with this. After all, it was just a ring. Yes, but also on some level, I was experiencing anew the loss of my mother. Ah, the old familiar feelings of loss and having to let go. I do not handle loss well, it having been a recurring theme throughout my life.

Then yesterday in the bedroom, something small and shiny caught my eye just before I swept it up into the vacuum cleaner. There, wedged in the thick carpet at the side of the bed was the ring!! It had indeed come back to me. I was flushed with relief, delight! I found myself again sitting on the edge of a bed marveling at the appearance of the ring. It must have slipped from my finger while I was tucking in the sheets but I didn't miss it until I whipped that stick into the lake. So strange... but I am comforted by the fact that sometimes what seems lost is merely misplaced. Sometimes loss is temporary, not permanent. Sometimes the sadness of loss turns into the joy of reunion. I think Eckhart Tolle is telling us that there is no loss... "When life takes away the forms that you thought were the foundation of your life, what's left? The life that needs no foundation; that is the foundation. The formless. The essence."

Spring!……proof there is life after death.

I sit high on the hill above the farm, my dog at my feet, the windmill at my back pumping away in the warm breeze. I commune with my late father, whose ashes I scattered on this spot almost 25 years ago. I was his ‘oldest buddy’ and we adored each other. He was the smartest man I have ever known. He never once let me down. He didn't call me his ‘best’ buddy, as he had 5 other children and he loved us all. However, I was his oldest child and, therefore, his ‘oldest buddy’. We relied on each other. My mother died when I was an infant, leaving just the two of us. He took me to work with him, and by the age of four I knew the name and purpose of every tool in his workshop and would hand him what he asked with the precision of a surgical technician. He taught me to drive a car when I was nine, though we never told anybody about that…..it was our secret. We both loved dogs and it was to him I brought the strays I rescued over the years, knowing my (step)mother would never let me keep them...but he would overrule her.

So it was I, his oldest buddy, who tended to him in his last years when nobody else came around because of his short temper and cutting words...brought on by the constant pain he suffered. Even so, he was ever loving, appreciative and kind to me. He always commented on how good I smelled to him whenever I hugged him tightly. We would go out for lunch and I would drive; he would direct our procession as we stopped here and there to do his small errands. Toward the end of his days, he would sit in the car and leisurely watch the people while I would pick up his groceries or medications, or the beer he enjoyed icy cold.

I think about my father as I sit on the high hill, where I will have his essence for company, his wisdom to support me and his spirit to protect me for the rest of my days. It is in this way he returns to life for me, like the miracle of Spring, which always returns after the dead of Winter.