Several days ago an associated press news article was written about a lost wedding ring. A woman from New Jersey “accidentally flushed” her wedding ring down the “toilet”. The article went on to say that she “noticed it was missing while she was cleaning her bathroom”.
I question the connection between “accidentally flushing” and “cleaning her bathroom”. She either was cleaning herself and the ring slipped off or she was cleaning the toilet and the ring slipped. In either case, the ring was flushed down the toilet.
But I digress.
The article goes on to say that a member of the public works department remembered that the woman mentioned losing the ring in such a manner about three years ago. The article doesn’t explain the relationship between the public works employee and the lady with the lost ring. I can only surmise that it must have been a random conversation between the two. In any case, the public works maintenance man was working in a manhole last November about 400 feet from the woman’s home and found the ring “sitting in the mud”.
The article that I’ve referenced was entitled “That’s Amazing”. Finding the ring under those circumstances is truly amazing. Even more amazing to me is the fact that the public works employee knew the lady and her lost ring story.
This article brought back memories of two other lost rings.
The second lost ring in this trilogy belongs to my daughter, Elizabeth. Just when you think that you have raised them to be responsible, they start losing things. Valuable things.
Elizabeth had a diamond ring that was given to her when she was very young after Ruth’s mom passed. The ring was passed on to Elizabeth through Ruth’s mom’s will. We put the ring away in a safe deposit box for safe keeping where it remained for over twenty-five years. (That is truly the responsible thing to do.)
Elizabeth went off to California after graduating with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. She established herself as a responsible person and held several responsible positions with important facilities. She made Ruth and me very proud.
She dated a couple of guys in California and ultimately fell in love with Sutton. Sutton did the gentlemanly thing and asked me if I approved of him marrying Elizabeth. I did.
He didn’t pop the question right away. Now that he had the green light from me, he bided his time. The following spring I received a phone call from Sutton. He knew the story of Elizabeth’s diamond ring and asked if he may use it as an engagement ring until he was able to purchase a ring worthy of my daughter. I said yes. The ring became her engagement ring and about a year later they married.
They were living in a house in San Diego. Elizabeth didn’t wear the ring all of the time. She kept it in a jewelry bag within her jewelry box with the rest of her prized possessions. After a time, Sutton and Elizabeth moved to a cute cottage with a peek-a-boo view of the Pacific Ocean that they nicknamed the Surf Shack
One day after the move, Elizabeth went to put on the ring and discovered that it was missing. She retraced her steps and feared that she may have given the ring to Goodwill during the move. She knew that she had indeed given Goodwill a jewelry bag. If the ring was in that bag, it was gone forever.
Neither Elizabeth or Sutton ever spoke of the lost ring with Ruth or me. Ruth did notice that Elizabeth never wore the ring when we saw her, but Ruth didn’t always wear her engagement or wedding ring. Like mother, like daughter.
They lived in the Surf Shack for three and a half years and decided it was time for a new adventure. They moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. Sutton had graduated from Northern Arizona University and the town was growing. They were considering opening a brew pub and with the growing University during the winter, and the Grand Canyon traffic in the summer, they thought that Flagstaff was the perfect place for their new business.
They bought a house and started exploring their options for the brew pub. Two winters came and passed and one day during their second spring in their new home, Sutton came into the house and told Elizabeth to “close your eyes and hold out your hand”. Fearing the worst, she complied. When she opened her eyes she saw the lost ring from five years prior.
Sutton took out the trash that morning, and as he turned to walk back into the house, something shiny caught his eye lying in a patch of dirt. He bent over, picked it up, and shock of shocks, the ring had returned.
How the ring made the trip from one San Diego residence to a second, across the four hundred and eighty-eight mile desert, to a small patch of high desert dirt in Flagstaff, Arizona will never be known. If you ask, Elizabeth will tell you that she had recently been thinking about her grandmother who had passed over thirty years ago, so that’s one explanation. As for any other speculation, your guess is as good as mine.
And then there’s the tale of my lost ring.
TBC