<![CDATA[Losing The Ring]]>Well, the procedure went well yesterday and I’m a little sore but fine. What’s not so fine is that they lost my wedding ring. I’d already changed into my OR clothes when a nurse noticed my ring was still on my finger. She asked to take it with my cellphone and said she’d put it in the bag in my locker. In the understandably woozy aftermath, as I prepared to leave, I found my phone in the bag but not the ring. I’ve been told they weddingaislewould have been together in a plastic ziplock bag inside the bigger clothes bag, but I only remember finding my phone loose among my clothes. I wasn’t fully altogether so forgive myself for not checking for the ring before I left. But last night, halfway through the Daily Show, I got that panicked feeling as I reached almost instinctively for my ring and it wasn’t there. Today, after searches and several phone calls, the ring has not been found. It was probably thrown out in the empty big bag I left behind.

I truly feel ill about this. I’m not at all a possessions-freak; in fact, I am wildly indifferent to things in general. But that little band of gold? After a lifetime of struggle for the right to marry and the blessing of finding my other half? I’m genuinely bereft. Yes, I’ll try and replicate it and get a new one. But knowing that that piece of metal had been on my finger continuously since the day I got married was, well, priceless. And every few minutes, I get this sudden sinking lurch in my gut when I remember what I’ve just lost.

It’s just a thing, Aaron reassures me. But this time, that ‘just’ seems inadequate. It keeps stinging.

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