My Mother's Ring
A Symbol of Love & the Power of Prayer
The following story is a true one. I wrote it years ago to get it out of my head and into written form. To keep. To share. To remind of the power of prayer.
Remembering exactly when as a little girl I fell in love with my mother’s engagement ring eludes me, but fall in love with it I did. Maybe my mother’s beautiful hand added to its allure or maybe I loved it so much because I loved her so much. Or maybe it was just because it was so pretty. The sparkle of that modest, but perfect, quarter karat in its square setting caught my eye and imagination and held them. Of course, at the time, I knew nothing of that—karats and such. It just dazzled me and it belonged to my mother. This fascination amused her. At some point back then, while I was still young, she promised it to me, saying, “Someday, darling, this will be yours.” Naturally, I didn’t fully understand what that might mean. It just made me so happy to know that someday my mother’s ring would be mine.
I grew up one of those lucky girls. I adored my mother, and according to her, I lit up her life. She had a distinctive laugh, a beautiful smile, and a wonderful sense of humor despite enormous tragedy in her life. A dark-haired Irish beauty, a woman of deep faith, courage and passion, with loads of common sense, she inspired me in every way. I promised her early on and many times, “Mom, I’m gonna be just like you when I grow up.” Later, when I could fully understand and appreciate what I had in her, I would often tell her that I didn’t know what I’d ever do without her. Her response was always the same: “You will be fine, my darling, because you are your mother’s daughter.”
And so it was in disbelief and gut-wrenching despair that I called an ambulance for her one cold Sunday night nearly 40 years ago. I was 25, watching my beloved, but very ill mother fade away in her bed right before my eyes. She didn’t want me to call that ambulance. She didn’t want to go to any hospital, but I knew she would certainly die in that bed if I didn’t get her help. How could I not try to get her help? Finally, she gave in, and in silent acquiescence, she let me get her ready. I changed her nightgown, packed a few things. Waiting together, she whispered the last words I ever heard her say, “Here, my darling, take this,” as she handed me her ring. I took it and though I knew I was lying, I said, “OK, Mom. I’ll put it in your jewelry box so it will be here for you when you come home.” She didn’t. About eight hours after her arrival at the hospital, she was gone.
A couple of years after that breathtaking loss, I met the man who would become my husband. We met at a hotel bar—the one I tended. I had returned to school to complete my undergraduate degree, left unfinished nearly eight years before, paying for it by bartending. When we talked about getting married, I told him I already had an engagement ring, the one I had dreamed of wearing since childhood—my mother’s ring. And so it was. It twirled on my finger a bit—probably needs resizing, I thought. Someday, I told myself.
I worked weekend nights for years, very often from set-up to close. That was the case one wintry Saturday — that unforgettable night when my mother’s ring mysteriously and without my notice left my finger. We had just finished setting up— clean glasses racked, filled juice bottles covered by ice in full bins, fridges refilled to the top with bottled beer, fruit cut, mats down — ready to go, and that’s when I noticed. My engagement ring — my mother’s ring — gone. Off my finger. Silently, I screamed to myself, “Oh my God! Where’s my ring? Where is my ring?” Heart racing, I patted myself down, frantically shoving my hands in my pants’ pockets. Nothing. Head down, I spun in place, eyes scared wide open, drilling down into the black, perforated bar mat, hoping the glint of my little diamond in gold would signal up to me from the dark floor, “Here I am!”
Nothing.
In an obvious panic, I told my fellow bartenders I’d lost my ring — oh my God, I’ve lost my ring! Right before “show time”, we broke down the bar we had just spent 45 minutes setting up. Two of the guys poured big buckets of steaming hot water into the four ice bins, melting pounds of ice, hoping to reveal the ring at the bottom of one of them. We turned the lights back up, we pulled the mats off the floor, we tore the bar part. The cocktail waitresses combed the room.
Nothing.
I ran back to the locker room, pulled out my coat, checked the pockets, squeezed my gloves, and shook them upside down. Nothing. I checked the locker room sinks, the stalls. Nothing. I called my husband, begging him to check everywhere — the shower, the sinks, the furniture cushions — look everywhere, I pleaded into the phone.
Smashing back through the locker room door, I dashed back down the wide rear hallway between the hotel’s kitchen and ballroom, darting past servers, ducking their loaded trays, pushing through the double doors, back out into the hotel lobby heading toward the front desk. Crowds of guests blurred as I scurried by them on my way to the back office where we kept our cash trays in locked drawers. No sign of it there. No sign of it anywhere. My heart began to break in two.
By that time, someone had alerted hotel security and the guy on duty that night approached me as I made my way back to the bar. He told me that the cleaning staff had been alerted, too. “We’re all looking for it”, he assured me. Together, he and I walked slowly through the lobby, our heads down, our eyes moving back and forth, scouring the carpet’s impossible pattern for that little bit of diamond and gold. Nowhere. It was nowhere.
I willed myself back behind the bar, using all of my energy to hold myself together, but it was no use. At last, the tears came in a flood and with them a feeling of utter despair and exhaustion. Bereft, I had to excuse myself. Back in the locker room, tears streaming, I called my husband again, knowing what I would hear. He had turned our place upside down and turned up nothing. On the bench in front of my locker, I slumped, head down, chin to my chest, shoulders sagging, limbs limp. My mother. Her ring. My parents’ marriage. My sparkling connection to her and symbol of my own marriage — gone — and I responsible for the loss. Indescribable despair. Unbearable questions of how I would live with myself. Devastated.
After I-don’t-know-how-many minutes, I did the only other thing I could think to do: I prayed. With every molecule. It was all I had left. Almost trance-like, I raised my right hand to my forehead and made the sign of the cross. Clasping my hands together and with all the strength I could muster, I began. Weakly, but out loud, face wet from tears, head bent, I slowly prayed, “Dear God, my dear God in heaven, You must bring my ring back to me. You must. I beg you. Please, please, please, Jesus, bring my ring back. I am begging you, dear God. Amen.”
With that, I made the sign of the cross once again. I heaved myself up and off the bench, resigned to the fact that it would take a miracle for me to ever see that ring again. I fixed my face as best I could and started to make my way back to the bar. Once again I walked through that wide back hallway, this time very slowly, this time noticing the round tabletops and extra chairs stacked up and leaning against the walls. I noticed my colleagues who worked the restaurant and ballroom busily crisscrossing that hallway with their loaded and empty trays as if in slow motion…
I saw one of the guys from the kitchen coming toward me, walking backwards as he mopped the floor with one of those enormous kitchen mops. Back and forth, back and forth, across that painted gray concrete floor he swabbed. I remember thinking to myself as I watched the mop’s huge cotton tentacles snatch everything in their path that I would never, ever see my ring again.
And then.
Then I heard it. I heard the “clinkclinkclink” of something skipping across that hard floor. I gasped and froze in place. Did I just kick something? What was that? I closed my eyes. Afraid of what would be crushing disappointment, I almost couldn’t bring myself to look down to see what had made that noise. But then I did, and when I did, there it was. My ring. Right in front of me. My mother’s ring. Back to me. My answered prayer. My miracle.
Elation.
I cannot explain what happened. Gone for at least two hours, I had retraced every step I could think of looking for my ring. My co-workers looked for it. My husband looked for it. I checked my pockets, my gloves, even my underwear! I guess it could have been stuck somewhere, but where? If so, it managed to stay stuck through self-pat-downs, frantic running down hallways, through the hotel lobby only to come un-stuck and bounce onto a surface that enabled a “clinkclinkclink” sound loud enough for me to hear in a noisy hallway mere moments before possibly being swabbed into oblivion.
I guess it’s possible there’s an explanation other than the miraculous. Other than the power of prayer.
I guess.
By the way, I didn’t put the ring back on that night. That Monday, I brought it to a jeweler for resizing. It can still spin on my finger just a bit, but my sparkling reminder of my mother, a symbol of love — and miracles — has stayed with me ever since.
Without a daughter of my own, I have already promised it to my brother’s daughter. She shares her grandmother’s big dark eyes and dark hair, and as her grandmother would have wanted, she will have my mother’s ring.
Merry Christmas to my dear readers. I wish you the blessings and miracles of this sacred Season. May God answer all of our prayers for peace, justice, and restoration.
Beautiful! Thank you. My eyes are wet.
Enjoyable writing ... and so nice to have these 'non-contentious' human connectivity.
The wonders of prayer!