Bearing Witness
There was a day some years ago when I walked into a jewelry store with my father and bought a ring for the woman I loved. The $800 price tag took my breath away, but I put down what money I had and promised to pay the rest over the next year. Along with her ring I picked out a simple gold band for myself.
J. put that gold ring on my finger in the middle of a ceremony that I scarcely remember. I do remember the way she looked when she came down the aisle. I remember her brown eyes looking at me through the veil. And I remember thinking, “We are actually doing this.”
There were a couple of ministers, as I recall, who had some things to say, as ministers generally do. As I remember it they sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher, saying “Wa WaWa Wa Wa” while I looked into her brown eyes and the world revolved around us. Someone sang “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” while we smiled at each other shyly. That moment and that song are forever a part of me.
Then it seemed like there were so many places to go. We were hustled here and there. We had to go down the aisle with music playing, then back up the aisle for pictures. Someone said we needed to hurry over to the reception, and when we got there it seemed like everyone was going every which way. I remember a cake or two, and her pushing a piece in my mouth. Someone would slap me on the shoulder, and I would turn to speak to him, and someone else would spin me around and give me a hug. Then we were running to my white Toyota pickup, the one I always loved, and we couldn't stop laughing when we got inside because we're married, can you believe it?
We stopped at a Pizza Hut on the way to Colorado, and my ring was so shiny and new that I felt like everyone in the buffet line was staring at it. I felt like we were pretending to be married because I didn’t feel grown up yet.
There was a little of this and a little of that, and lo, nineteen years have passed. That shiny ring is now nicked and scratched and nicely dull. It has a life patina, you might say, and I like it much better now. It's the same ring she put on my finger, and that's very important to me. I don’t want any other ring. I like knowing that it's the exact same one, and I think about that sometimes.
I take my ring off a few times a year, for one reason or another. If I’m bored I might spin it on a tabletop. Or I might peep through it like Tom Bombadil in “The Fellowship of The Ring.” Sometimes I'll slip it onto each of my fingers to see how far down it will go. I fiddle with it sometimes, but mostly it just sits on my finger bearing witness to my life.
Someday someone else will take this ring off my finger. I hope it's one of the three sisters who holds my cold hand for the last time and slips the ring off for a keepsake. I hope my devotion to her mother means enough to her that my faults will be nothing more than chuckles. Maybe she will keep my ring in a box, taking it out ever so often to look at it and smile.
And then one day my daughter will be gone herself, and that will be the end of this story, I think. Wedding rings shouldn’t be kept past one generation anyway. There comes a time when everyone should move on. Maybe my ring will end up in a box of rings at a pawnshop, a sad and lost ring with a hidden story that will never again be told. I saw a box full of old rings once. You could scoop up a handful of them like beans from a barrel, and every one of them had a forgotten story.
And if in the course of events my ring should be melted down someday to become part of a shiny, new piece of jewelry, I wonder if it will carry some slight trace of my story with it.
Because rings are made of ancient things and bear witness to what is unimaginable.
rlp
Tom Bombadil
7:51:15 AM 
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