Symbol Lost, Love Not

It didn’t take my fiancé and I more than 20 minutes to choose the wedding rings we would wear for the rest of our lives. It also didn’t take me more than four months to lose the symbolic promise of our marriage.

On July, 10, 2010, I pledged my promise to Holly and we sealed our marriage with the exchange of rings and of course a kiss. Less than four months later while at a Halloween party on October 30th, I happened to glance at my finger and suddenly realized the ring to symbolize my love for my wife was missing. I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. A million thoughts ran through my head…When did I last have the ring? How long has the ring been missing? How could I have not realized it was missing? Where could it be? And the most important question, how am I going to tell my wife?

The sick feeling in my stomach began to build rapidly. I knew my wife would understand but I also didn’t want to disappoint her. I quickly found her in mid-conversion with someone. I immediately interrupted them and quietly told her what I had just realized. She said exactly what I needed to hear. “We’ll find it. And even though the ring is lost it doesn’t change our love for each other. Nothing will ever change that.”

We carried on the rest of the evening as best we could. We couldn’t help but think of the many places that it could have been. I had gone to my parent’s house, Holly’s parents and I even went to her brother-in-laws house. The scariest thought of all was that we had spent a good portion of the day clearing leaves from our yard and put them into a trailer that was four feet wide, eight feet long and two feet deep. We had completely filled the trailer. Could it be amidst the thousands upon thousands of fallen leaves? I dared not to think of it.

My wife and I woke up the next day and made a few phone calls to our family members to see if we could track down the ring. Holly’s brother-in-law said he had seen me wearing the ring; Holly’s mom searched her house only to find nothing and my parents were on the hunt. After an hour or two of waddling we decided it was time to go through the trailer leaf by leaf to see if we could find the ring.

I flipped open the top to the trailer. All of yesterday’s hours of hard work had to be undone in hopes of finding the ring. It was the last thing either of us wanted to do on a Sunday, but it was the last ditch effort before coming to grips that the ring was truly lost and gone forever. As we took handfuls of leaves out of the trailer we kept our eyes open for a shiny glimmering object in the pile of brown, yellow and red colors. I kept thinking, “What am I going to do if we don’t find it?” The ring wasn’t some new t-shirt with a stain on it that could have been easily replaced. It symbolized our love and was engraved with “H & T 7-10-10.” The thought of the ring being gone forever made my head spin.

My wife and I knew that we could spend hours taking the leaves out of the trailer to not discover the ring, but we had to give it a try. Holly started taking leaves out from the rear of the trailer, but soon she moved to the front end of the trailer. She said something urged her to move to the front of the trailer. We carefully filled a barrel of leaves and then dumped it on the ground. The wind whipped and began to spread color all over our green lawn once again. We continued to fill the barrel until it was full a second time. Our spirits were low. I said, “You know, this could be one of those situations where we spend days looking for it only to give up and then by chance find it years later.”

Just as I finished saying that I turned and looked into the trailer and let out a big gasp. I quickly reached into the trailer and yelled, “I found it!” I was in shock. I didn’t think we’d be able to find this one tiny object among the mounds and mounds of leaves. Not only could I not believe that we had found it but I also couldn’t believe that we only went through two barrels of leaves to find it. The sense of relief rushed over me. I felt like all was well again with the world. I told Holly to hold on to the ring because I didn’t trust myself to even hold it let alone put it back on my finger. Soon the ring will be resized and all will be well. A tremendous weight has been lifted.