Band of Love

******************

I sat on our sofa playing with my ring. I remembered forgetting to put it on after Georgia cleaned it one day. At work, I kept reaching for it with my thumb. I felt empty without it.

Now I had a decision to make. I looked at Georgia’s picture on the TV stand. “When do I take it off?” I asked no one. I was alone. Our children were in their rooms, grieving in their own way. Georgia’s urn rested on the credenza in the dining room. We’d brought her home from the service that afternoon. Her ring rested in my left palm. “When do I take mine off?” I was afraid. If I took it off, would it mean the love we shared was gone? The band of gold stayed on my finger. When my thumb touched it, my thoughts drifted to past times and not to the future and the life we planned. “When do I take it off?” I asked myself again. It was with me from the day we’d married more than nineteen years earlier. It’d been on my finger when I changed my children’s diapers. We took drives, my hand held the steering wheel. The ring reflected the sunshine. It circled my finger when we made love. The day she took her last breath, I held her hand and the ring reflected the machines that had kept her alive. I reached behind my neck and undid the clasp of the gold chain. She’d given it to me on our first Christmas together. I threaded her ring onto it and started to put it back around my neck. I paused and put it down. The fingers of my right hand reached for my ring a final time. I twirled it around like old times and then slipped it off. I held it to the light. It was scratched and dented from the rigors of living. It joined Georgia’s ring on the chain. My hand felt empty without its comforting weight, but the combined rings hanging around my neck soothed my pain—a reminder of our years together.