Have you noticed if I was wearing a ring on my thumb today?

Today I did something I haven’t done in a very long time. I tried to put a brave face on and chair meetings. I cried in the office. I cried on the tube. I cried on the train. And why? Because at just after 1pm today, I looked down at my thumb and couldn’t see my late husband’s wedding ring on it. It’s where I’ve been wearing his ring for a couple of years now. Admittedly, not every day, but more often than not.

Logic dictated that it had to be at home and that I’d just been so busy this morning that I hadn’t noticed I wasn’t wearing it from the off. I logged a Lost Property claim with the train company. I retraced all my steps in the office. I emailed Security at work to see if it had been handed in. I asked my colleagues the most stupid question “have you noticed if I was wearing a ring on my thumb today?” Of course, they hadn’t, we’ve all been busy, in meetings or on calls and it wasn’t like I was asking them something obvious like what colour dress I was wearing when I came into the office. But immediately they started rallying around me. I was reminded once again of just how lucky I am to have this support and care at work. To the point that one utterly amazing human even went through bins for me while I went on calls. Other colleagues brought me tissues, a glass of water and tried to persuade me to go home to look for it.

But what I couldn’t properly articulate to them though was that a part of me just needed to be there and to do calls. Because to go home and discover it wasn’t there would have made this real. I needed to cling to that one word that’s kept me going through the last three years. Hope. All the while I could maybe pretend my mind was playing tricks on me and I simply hadn’t put it on this morning, I could try to rationalise that it must be at home. Hope with everything I had that it was at home.

As I walked out of the office I was crying. I knew I was edging ever closer to finding out once and for all if it was gone. I messaged on the Widowed and Young WhatsApp group what had happened. I just needed people who “get it” to empathise. Their messages of support and understanding helped. They knew what this would mean if it was lost. I messaged my sister who also tried to calm me down. I corrected her grammar as I’m known to do, I felt I could be let off, I was trying to keep myself busy after all, but I knew I wasn’t really feeling it anymore. This pain was real. Absurdly real. And raw.

It absolutely blindsided me. I kept trying to keep myself calm and tell myself it must be at home but all I really wanted to do was sit and sob. Yet I couldn’t really understand why. The ring isn’t him. If I’m perfectly honest, he was a complete nightmare with it when he was alive. He’d fiddle with it, take it off, not wear it and forget where he’d put it. So much so that when the Funeral Director asked if he was going to be buried with jewellery I said no, I simply didn’t see the point of him having it. I felt like I’d probably end up wearing it more in the future than he had over our 14-year marriage!

Today though I realised it was much, much more than that. This ring was proof of our relationship and our marriage. Now, that may sound silly to some people but one of the more random things that has happened to me since being widowed is this bizarre feeling that I dreamt him. That I dreamt it all. And that none of it was real. It’s beyond difficult to explain, mainly because I don’t really understand it myself. I know he was real. I know our relationship spanned over two decades. I know we had a child together. I know we owned different houses together. I know we made a gazillion memories. But how much of that is tangible? How much of that is real? And outside of my head?

I think in part this is down to the circumstances of his death. The fact that none of it seemed real. It was two weeks before I even saw him on a screen and could verify that they had the right person. I didn’t get to physically see him in hospital. I didn’t get to see him in the Chapel of Rest. I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye. Everything just felt so, so surreal. So, I cling to anything now that proves he was real.

It’s probably why it’s been so important to me to have memory items made. We’ve had Memory Bears and Blankets made out of his clothes. Again. In the same way as the ring isn’t him, neither are they. But I can look at them and know that he did wear them. I can show them to family and friends who also remember him wearing them and we can talk about him. I’ve also had a ring made with his ashes in and my daughter and I both have a decoration for the tree made out of his ashes. It keeps him part of our future.

I’m also fairly sure that this upcoming Sunday was subconsciously playing on my mind today too. Sunday marks 18 years since we got married. My fourth as a widow. That’s another funny thing I’ve noticed the longer I’ve been widowed, I refer to things that I previously would have said plural as singular now. My daughter. My wedding anniversary. My house. I don’t actually know when I started doing this, but I’ve recently become conscious of the fact I’m doing it. And I don’t really know why. I guess as time goes by and our lives move forward, his absence feels more and more pronounced. That I feel even more on my own and without him than I did at the start of widowhood. The all-consuming pain and grief kept him very much part of me back then. And while I’m still relatively early on in the widowhood journey, I do know that I’m so much further along than I was. The pain and grief don’t consume me in the same way. But today, losing the ring, that pain and grief was strong. Because losing the ring simply felt like another loss. Another loss that I was unprepared for. In the same way I was unprepared for losing him. All of this going through my mind on the train on the way home. My brain working overtime.

Then the inevitable. I got home. And if I’m perfectly honest, I knew what was going to happen next. It wasn’t there. The ring wasn’t there. And while I did empty my handbag and laptop bag for the gazillionth time again and look in all the very obvious places, I didn’t turn the house upside down. But that’s because I didn’t need to. I know where I put the ring when I got home last night. It was with all the other ones I was wearing today. I know where I’d have picked it up from this morning. It wasn’t there. Or anywhere obvious. That gut feeling I had at 1:15pm was right. I knew the second I noticed that it was no longer on my thumb that I’d lost it since leaving home. I was just clinging to hope. The tears didn’t stop then. I just felt numb. Completely and utterly numb. I went into autopilot. I started cooking dinner. I started sorting things out. Because it’s my default. Rather than having to think about how I feel, I keep busy.

It’s why I then wrote a Facebook and Twitter post (sorry, can’t call it X). To stay busy. Ironically I tried to find a photo of the ring, but we didn’t get the obligatory one at our wedding of the hands. And in almost every photo I found of him, he wasn’t wearing it. Told you, he was a fiddler with it. I did find one though. But it’s not the clearest. But I also wanted to write these posts on the off chance that it might help find it. What I was unprepared for, however, was how quickly my phone would start going mental. How quickly my daughter would be saying to me “Mum, your phone is really annoying me.” And despite how rubbish, emotional and numb I felt about the lost ring, I was taken right back to when he fell ill and to when all I had was virtual support. I’d forgotten what it was like to have strangers sending good wishes your way. I haven’t actually been able to keep up with all the comments yet. It’s all a little overwhelming.

I feel exhausted right now. My brain still feels scrambled at what’s happened today. I don’t really know how I feel. Other than numb. People say things happen for a reason. I don’t always believe that; let’s face it, I’ve still not and doubt I ever will, work out what the reason for a global pandemic was. But if I’m going to take anything from today, it’s a reminder that there really is a lot of kindness in this world. That people care. That if you ask a friend to send you something to make you smile, there are hilarious videos on the internet to be sent. Which against all odds do make you smile.

Maybe this was a sign from Mr C to remind me of all this. Maybe this was a sign from him to tell me something else. I don’t know. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll work it out and I will know. And in the meantime, I’m going to pray for a miracle and hope that somehow it comes to back to me.