Learning To Say Goodbye

I think I must have used at least a zillion of my brains cells since yesterday. How? Trying to figure out when was the last time I had seen Dean’s wedding ring that has been a constant companion to my wedding and engagement ring on my finger for the past 7 months. I looked down yesterday and saw that it was missing and went into a complete panic. For all of these months it had stayed there without coming off simply because my engagement ring was just tall enough to hold it in place. Worried about it ever coming off accidently and losing it, I would test it regularly by turning it this way and that way and I couldn’t get it to budge even when I gently tried to force it past my rings. Yet yesterday, it was gone and I was heartbroken.

I backtracked in my mind and tried to remember the last time I had actually looked at it on my finger which I do alot especially when I’m thinking about him which is also alot. I couldn’t remember when was the last time no matter how hard I tried. The only thing I could think of was that I must have had it on the day before when I went out to do the yard. Of course, I’ve done the yard many times in the heat without it coming off. I couldn’t even imagine that it would have been gone too long or surely I would’ve noticed it before yesterday.

As luck would have it, when I first noticed it missing, the weather turned horrible and it started storming - it poured down for hours. Since I couldn’t go outside and look I decided to try looking around the house. I remembered how exhausted I was when I came in that night after mowing and weed-eating. I remember being so tired I could barely keep my eyes open so I went to bed early that night. I checked where I sleep on the couch in the computer room. I literally tore everything apart looking for it. No sign of it there though. Then I checked the bath tub, the bathroom floor, the dirty clothes hamper, pockets, everywhere I could think of. I even took the drain apart under the bathroom sink, something I’ve never done before. I checked everywhere out in the kitchen and livingroom, the garbage disposal, all the trash cans, the dog cages and I could not find it anywhere. More and more I was beginning to believe it had to be outside somewhere. Maybe the heat had caused his ring to expand just enough to slip over mine for the first time in all of these months. But that thought was depressing because as hard it rained, our yard floods with that much rain over a long period. I was thinking it would take a miracle to find it if it was out there. With nothing else I could do about the situation at the moment I just went to bed so morning would come quicker. But just laying there thinking about how I’d lost “my piece of Dean” I cried myself to sleep.

First thing this morning I was up and out the door, walking and looking and raking through dead grass and all the mess that washed into my yard from the neighbors’ yards. And then the rain started again. I tried to brave it but when the lightening started and that big clap of thunder sounded I figured I’d best get back to the house. I waited again for it to slack up and went out again to no avail. I started thinking I might need to buy a metal detector and had already gone online to see where I could purchase one locally. I found them at Walmart but when I called the store to inquire about them and talked to 4 different departments they told me they don’t carry them. They do, but this is Walmart, and once again they don’t check first or ask anyone they just figure because they’ve never seen them in the store that they don’t carry them. So then I called the rental place and found I could rent one for $17 a day.

After all of this, I went out once more, this time in the rain, and walked and walked some more trying to cover every square foot of the yard. After going over a little more than half of it again and getting ready to check under the trampoline for the 10th time, it seemed, I looked down to the left and - lo and behold, there it was! I couldn’t believe it, after all the praying and making deals with God as I went round and round the yard, there it was sitting there like - “Here I am! Come and get me!” At that very moment I was ecstatic. I reached down and picked it up, held it between both my hands and raised them towards Heaven and just kept saying “thank you, thank you, thank you!!!” For the first time in a very long time I had found something to be truly happy about. And I’m so thrilled to have found Dean’s ring and will never do anything so stupid again as to lose it. I don’t have much of anything physical left of Dean, but this ring that my sweetheart wore for 34 years and rarely, if ever, took it off means so much to me. I feel like I received my own little miracle today by having found it.

You know, it makes you think about the big picture… Yes, I hated losing him. I’ve been angry, mad, sad, depressed and all kinds of every other negative emotion you can think of. But today, I felt true happiness when I found that ring. A simple thing, but such a big thing. I’ve not been happy in a very long time but this gives me hope that maybe if I can feel happiness about this then somehow, someway I can find happiness in other things too as time goes by. It doesn’t seem possible to find joy after losing such a big part of my life but now I know I still possess the ability to feel this emotion that I thought I’d never feel again. I could have won the lottery, someone could have given me a mansion but neither of those things would have made me happier than finding Dean’s wedding ring.

There has been a story in our local papers for the past couple of days that has tugged at my heartstrings about a little 11 year old boy who was swimming with two of his friends in a pond behind his house. He was viciously attacked by an almost 11 foot alligator that bit his arm off at the shoulder. Deputies working in the area were notified of the incident and ran on foot to where they found the boy climbing out of the water with the one arm he had left. They rushed him to the hospital. In the meantime they hunted down, caught the alligator, cut it open, retrieved the little boy’s arm and got it to the hospital as fast as they could but the doctors were unsuccessful in reattaching it. Yet, in this morning’s paper it said the boy and his family were in very good spirits. One of the deputies was quoted as saying, “Hopefully, he can overcome the cards that he was dealt.”

That one statement touched me so very deeply. If this child can learn to live without his arm then surely I can also learn to live the life that I have left without Dean. It isn’t what I would have chosen for me to do but this little boy didn’t choose to have a confrontation with an 11 foot alligator that would tear away one of his arms that he would have to learn to live without either.

I guess, this is that update I was hoping for.