Now that they're gone.

                Isn't it curious how things seem to have a bit more importance once you no longer have them?   This reality hit me a bit harder than expected when we realized our wedding rings were missing.

                Thing is we don’t wear them very much.  In fact I can’t remember the last time I wore my ring. It has been so long I don’t even have an indentation on my left hand or a tan line as most wives do.  I stopped wearing my rings a couple years ago when I was in and out of the hospital.  I kept it in a Lenox Shell dish we received as an engagement gift almost 25 years ago which sat on my dresser along with other pieces of jewelry.  Michael isn’t able to wear his wedding ring at work for safety reasons.  His ring was stored quite uniquely on the arm of a witch.  That is it’s a piece from his Franklin Mint Wizard of Oz Collection that I bought as his wedding gift.

                Early December Michael was clearing the top of his dresser (his catch all) and noticed his ring wasn't where it was supposed to be.  I assured him it had to be there somewhere, maybe it fell behind the dresser or he put it somewhere else and just forgot.  He was upset about it while I wasn’t too worried saying I knew it would show up.  Then Sunday while reorganizing some drawers and my dresser top ~ which ok also is usually covered with papers and such~ I saw that my ring as well was gone.  When we were looking for Michael’s ring I thought I checked on my ring among the jewelry in my dish, now I'm not so sure.

     Here’s the thing.  We don’t have really anything of value in our house especially when it comes to jewelry.  I’ve often thought how Emily has a set of pearls and a platinum cross.  The only pearls I have are fresh water from when I was a bridesmaid that I have stored in the jeweler’s box in my dresser.  Michael has a nice watch that doesn’t work so that’s not out either.  Even the best electronics in the house belong to the kids.

        We have no real clue what happened to them.  We don’t believe we were robbed as nothing else is missing, but again there isn't much of anything to take even both of our TVs are over 10 years old. Then I was thinking with all of the gold signs everywhere how hard is it to sell some rings?  

      We can only come up with two possible scenarios.  Did something happen during our weekend trip to Mobile?  We had a neighbor’s son take care of the dogs while we were gone, maybe he didn't lock up one night? The other thought is maybe we left the garage door open one day without realizing it?  Who knows.

                We’d like to think our rings were special, though I’m sure every married couple does.  We designed our rings.  Mine was an inset with 4 begets and Michael’s held 5 small begets.   Both rings had five diamonds (counting my engagement ring) as we planned on having 5 children (oh dear heavens what were we thinking ~ ah the young and foolish). The plan with my ring was when the day comes to have it separated into three separate rings.  Each of the girls would have a part of the wedding ring and the engagement ring would pass onto Patrick.  My rings haven’t separated in over 20 years.  Spring 1991 I was recovering on the couch after an outpatient procedure and put my rings on the coffee table.  When I awoke they were nowhere to be found. Lying next to me the entire time was our dog Hobbes.  Three days later Michael finally found the rings outside in the yard with one of the begets missing.  Need I say more as to what happened! We took the rings to various jewelers and despite various attempts the rings couldn’t be separated without cutting them and I just didn’t want to do that.

                So I guess I am going to truly have to live up to my comments of not needing things to hold onto memories.  I’ll be honest I never thought I’d have to apply that to my wedding ring.