Lost Ring

Eleven years ago, my mom gave me my grandfather’s wedding ring for Christmas. It’s a simple white gold band about 3 millimeters in width. There’s small perpendicular tooling etched across the ring’s surface that’s nearly worn away.
My grandpa died when he was 74, I was 12.
He was my favorite.
I wore his ring on my right ring finger.
When my ex wife and I separated, I moved into my mom’s extra room for a few months until my ex and I could divide our finances.
I’m not sure why I took the ring off, but I did.
I remembered putting it on a small steel tray on the dresser in the my parent’s spare room.
I’m not entirely sure about the timing, but I remember realizing the ring wasn’t there. For whatever reason, I didn’t look for it right away.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes, when I sense dread, my inclination is to bury my head.
Anyway, I did look the next day.
When I didn’t find it immediately, a slight sense of panic washed over me.
I froze as my brain went into overdrive.
Did I put it in the tray?
Could it have fallen off of the dresser, maybe into the trashcan?
The whole thing had me spinning!
A day later, I dug through everything.
Nothing…
I remember the sense of despair.
It was at that point, the search turned into a mini obsession.
I had to be sly because the thought of anyone finding out that I had lost this ring was beyond anything I could admit.
This thing was a family heirloom.
Truly precious and irreplaceable…
When I moved out of my parent’s house a few months later, I was sure I would find it.
I didn’t.
When I moved into my new house and unpacked my boxes, I was sure it would turn up.
It didn’t.
I looked through everything.
Nothing…
Over the years, I’d get re-inspired and dig through everything again.
Sifting through my memento boxes piece be piece.
Each concert ticket,
Every picture, as though it may be stuck to some surface.
I dug through boxes that didn’t make any sense to dig through.
Flipping through every book and their pages.
Every memento, I’d give a little shake,
Hoping it would magically fall to the floor.
I unfolded every t-shirt slowly and carefully.
Every sock…
My mementos never saw so much attention.
I’m not sure what I thought would change?
Over and over, over the years,
More slowly and more methodically.
It was alway the same.
The same brochure,
The same button,
The same stuff…
Over the years, I got more used to the idea that it was gone,
But the guilt was ever present.
I don’t remember the first time that I lied about it.
My mom would ask, “Do you still have grandpa’s ring?”
“Yeah, yeah… of course. It’s at home.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that truth.
The ring he wore for all those years.
Worn by time and toil.
And I had lost it.
The last time my mom asked was Christmas.
It broke my heart, but again, I assured her the ring was safe and sound.
A lie that never got easier to tell.
Earlier that year, my wife and I put our house on the market. We had signed purchase agreements on both our house and a new house. Both were scheduled to close on the same day in one month. A week later, we hired a housing inspector. They found significant water damage and black mold in the house we planned to buy.
Heartbroken, we walked away.
This put us in a real predicament.
We would be homeless in three weeks.
My parents, who leave for the winter, generously offered us their home.
So there I was again, living in their basement.
The same room with the same dresser,
A dresser that only has three drawers.
And we had three people: my wife, my son, and myself.
Tight was an understatement.
It was a remarkable exercise in economy.
So, when she asked about the ring that Christmas, I was living in her home.
Sigh…

We spent every spare moment searching for a house.
Due to the time of year, the housing market was rather bleak.
There were very few new listings, but we did our due diligence and looked at all of them. One had such horrible pictures that my wife didn’t even want to waste our time, but we were desperate.
Begrudgingly, we arranged to see it the first day it was listed.
It was the day after New Years, dark, and twelve degrees below zero.
I’ve bought enough houses to realize what happened when we walked in.
You know when you know.
It was the house.
It was a one in a million. I won’t go into the details but between the architecture, location, and price, we knew we had stumbled on to something incredibly unique. The house was bank owned and their purchasing stipulations were highly unusual and complicated.
They wouldn’t even accept an offer for the first seven days, and offers needed to be presented with a fully underwritten loan.

My parents had left for the winter.
We were getting into the swing of things.
We had made their home into our own.
The fridge was filled with our favorites and the laundry room, our linens.
Life was good.
Not ideal, but good.

The anxiety of having to wait to make an offer was killing us.
The last thing we wanted was a bidding war.
Regardless, we had our work cut out for us pulling together this highly unusual loan request. The strings we pulled and hoops we jumped through were laughable, but ultimately, we were able to put this stupidly complicated offer together.
We did the best we could.
The rest was up to fate.
Either they’d accept our offer or not.
To make matters more complex, my wife was asked to interview for her dream job. It was a life changing opportunity. Her interview would be six hours long. The process demanded seven separate meetings and an on camera audition. I’d never heard of anything like it.
Our heads were spinning, especially hers.
Oh, and, she was six months pregnant!
The next day, we would know if our life was destined to go down this path.
I had to be up at 5:00am that morning.
I woke up with my heart rate already racing.
My head full of chatter.
My wife had worked late the night before so I was trying not to wake her as I got dressed. I put on my underwear, t-shirt, and pulled on my jeans.
Quietly, I went back to the dresser, gently pulled open my drawer, and took the first pair of clean socks from the top of the pile.
I gasped in disbelief.
Like an apparition…
I couldn’t believe it!
There it sat, perfectly placed on the pile of freshly cleaned socks,
Looking at me, almost smiling.
The ring!
I just stood there frozen, shocked!
It was beyond comprehension!
Reaching down to touch it, I searched for the worn tooling.
Although I instinctively knew it was the ring, I still couldn’t believe it.
I had to see the marks.
It was dark,
But as I turned the ring, I could make out the soft and subtle shadows showing the unmistakable markings.
It was my grandpa’s wedding ring!
I could feel myself get flushed.
Seven years had passed!
What are the chances that I’d be where I was at that moment?
What are the chances that this ring would be in that random drawer, the drawer I had randomly chosen, on my pile of socks, and placed so perfectly?
The dresser that had been filled and emptied time and time again. The room that had been cleaned to perfection over and over by my mother who would put Martha Stuart to shame. The room my sister and her family stay in four to five times a year. That dresser has been filled and emptied each and every one of those times.
What are the chances? The probability was stunningly close to zero!
2,555 days!
How many times has she vacuumed?
How many times has that dresser been knocked and bumped?

When I lost the ring, my life was in shambles.
The wheels had come clean off the bus.
The past seven years were really a time of rejuvenation.
My life was now bustling with positivity and opportunity.

Finding this ring was as though my grandfather was reaching out to say,
“I’m proud of you.”
Shaking with disbelief and awe, I woke up my sleeping wife.
Groggily, she looked at me curiously.
With glistening eyes, I told her,
“It’s my grandpa’s ring, I found it.”
With absolute confidence,
I whispered,
“Today is going to be a great day…”