Look at those happy faces! I admit I have no idea when or where this photo was taken. Maybe when we stopped to visit Anita in St. Louis on our way to Shell Knob the weekend of that fateful Irish victory over New Zealand. Whenever, it was it was a happy day with Jiff And Elaine Reid. Tomorrow is Jiff’s seventieth birthday! Happy Birthday young man!
The past few weeks have been busy with graduations and plenty of time spent with friends and family. Reconnecting with old friends has been a blessing. Small conversations here and there to let people know how much I appreciate them. Conversations with my in-laws. Seeing my nieces and nephews and their children progressing with their happy and healthy lives. I feel as though I have had the privilege of being witness to life going on as it should.
And yet I have had unexplained moments of utter sadness. Out of the blue! Geez. What the heck? I think about how Jim would have loved those gatherings, his pride at being a part of the celebrations. The joy he would have brought with him. I am so grateful for the life that I have. But I am so sad and angry that Jimmy didn’t get to have these times with me. He is missing out on so much.
I have his wedding ring on a long gold necklace chain. I wore it to his funeral and several times since. I don’t wear it all the time. I think that would appear ostentatious? But I wear it to family functions (and that includes “The Gang.”) Somehow it seems like I’m including him in the action. It’s silly I know, but that’s how it feels to me. When I am wearing it I have a tendency to play with it. It’s a boulder of a ring! I could wear it on my thumb, but it would fall off!
He thought he had lost it once. Before our move to Minnesota he carefully packed it away and in the commotion of packing and moving and working and unpacking he totally forgot what he had done with it. Why didn’t he just wear you might ask. The railroad doesn’t allow employs to wear jewelry that has the potential to get caught on some piece of dangerous equipment or another, so often when he traveled it remained home on his dresser, which is where I keep it now on it’s chain. For months he bemoaned it’s loss, which, of course, included berating himself for loosing it! Had he left it in some hotel bathroom? Had he left it on his dresser and one of the people who packed up our things pocketed it? He searched and searched and finally gave it up for lost.
Should we replace it? I asked. No! THAT was his ring! And he had lost it. A different one wouldn’t be the same. I had to agree. Thankfully, it showed up later that year in a box, in a box, in a box. What a relief! What a joy! And, of course, the memory of packing it carefully in the first two of those boxes returned as well.
I will wear it tomorrow when I go to Omaha to celebrate Mother’s Day with the Tim Cunningham crew and feel like I am taking Jim with me as well. Of course, I don’t need his ring for that. He is always with me.