I think most widows wrestle with their rings soon after losing a spouse.    Do you still wear them and if so for how long?   Do you wear them on a different hand?   Do you put them away forever?    

Here it’s five years out and I’m still wrestling with that.     For a while I wore them on my right hand and wore Brian’s ring on my index finger.  (that was the only finger it fit on).   He was wearing it when he died as he always did so I felt a deep connection to it and still do.     His death was so unexpected that I still felt married for a very long time.   You don’t go from being married one day and not the next but in reality that’s exactly what happened.    Isn’t it odd that when you get married you have to get a license and such but there was no ceremony or divorce decree or process that made me “unmarried” other than his death and oh yeah that terrible death certificate that details how and where he died.    It still breaks my heart when I see that because it’s not who he was but is forever how he will be legally known with that piece of paper.    I have had to keep lots of copies on hand and send it to various entities over these past years to prove his death so I have seen it more times than I would have liked.   

I stopped wearing my full wedding set on my right hand after I had returned to work and a customer who didn’t know about my loss asked why I wore my rings on the wrong hand.   Needless to say it was uncomfortable for both of us and I was still so emotionally fragile at that point and was constantly near tears so I stopped wearing them just to prevent that from happening again.   Most of my customers knew because of our relationship and that wasn’t much easier because I would walk in trying to be so calm and pulled together and their sympathy would often times break my armor and my eyes would well up and my voice would quiver and then it was hard to regain composure and do what I was there to do.    Eventually I couldn’t do it anymore or the travel that they needed me to do so I quit about a year and half after Brian died.   Like I said in my last blog, I was different and my life was different and that job was my old life and full of reminders of that old life plus my kids, especially my oldest, really needed security that I was at home and not going anywhere when I went out of town like daddy did.    How do you encourage your kid that nothing will happen to you when he also believed that about his dad?    I can’t promise because you never know what the next day may hold but I do encourage them the best way that I can that I will be here.    

Off and on now I wear just my wedding band on my right hand.   I miss the meaning and sparkle and no one has ever asked about it when I wear it so I feel like it’s “safe”.    Sadly, they sit out of sight so I really would like to get them made into another ring that I could wear on my right hand that wouldn’t look so much like a wedding ring.   I met with our jeweler and he could do all sorts of gorgeous things but it would cost about $2000 so I keep putting it off because that’s a lot of money for something that isn’t a necessity in my life right now.    One of these days I will be able to do it so it can be worn and remind me of what was and what is and then can I hand it down to Haley.  

Six months after Brian died we all went to Estes Park , Colorado as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs to spread his ashes over a trout stream as were his wishes when I asked him out of the blue that day not long before he passed.      At the time I was still wearing my ring on my right hand and after we scattered his ashes I looked down at my ring and saw my husbands remains covering it.    It instantly and strongly hit me at that moment.    It seemed surreal.    I’m finding it hard to accurately explain that emotion here but I was looking at something that my brain was having a hard time processing.    My ring that I had looked at and admired for over 10 years that symbolized our marriage was covered in what was left of my husband.   My life.  My life that I couldn’t get back.