No Saints around Here: A Caregiver’s Days

A Ring among the Ashes

206 A RING AMONG THE ASHES A Year Later Sometimes, when I am far from home, I take comfort in picturing James’s wedding ring. When James and I decided to get married, he designed two matching wedding rings. Carrying a simple sketch, he happily marched me into a goldsmith’s shop. Both rings would be broad gold bands, with a hexagonal raised surface in the center. On my ring, as if it were a tiny canvas, James instructed the goldsmith to inscribe a small drawing. This drawing was James’s unique signature. He ended most of his notes and letters with it: a cartoon of his face, a fringe of balding hair at the top, a few vertical dashes for his short beard, cheery round glasses over dots of eyes, and a curve of his irresistible smile. With a few strokes, it captured not only James’s likeness but also his exuberance. Anyone who knew him recognized this signature immediately. Then James told me to write my name on a piece of paper. The goldsmith could reduce my scribble in size and reproduce it. So on the oval of James’s ring is one word: Susan. Our rings almost never left our hands—except once, when James’s slipped off his finger into our garbage disposal while the motor was running. The motor became very noisy. A jeweler a ring among the ashes 207 conjured the rescued ring back into shape, with my name scratched but legible, though the ring remained somewhat battered . I told James that this was the symbolic mark of a long and lively marriage. In his last year of Parkinson’s, James lost a great deal of weight. His ring began to slide around on his finger and irritate his thin skin. One day he asked me to remove it and put it in a safe place. (I stashed it in a tiny plastic food storage container on top of my desk.) Occasionally, especially as James’s mind began to wander, he would inquire worriedly where his ring was. I would run upstairs to my desk and bring it down to his room. Then he would nod, satisfied he hadn’t lost it. After James died, I did not know what I should do with it. In an earlier era, I might have buried it on his hand. But James was cremated. It was not an heirloom, like a grandmother’s diamond engagement ring, that I could pass on to my daughter. Nor did I plan to wear it (as some widows might) on a chain around my neck. I didn’t need a reminder of James’s commitment. Besides, I had my own ring, with his face, almost burnished into erasure by now, but still there. James died very early on a Wednesday morning; his funeral was the following Monday; Tuesday our family gathered at the gravesite to deposit his ashes. Between Wednesday and Tuesday, I just knew. I wanted to bury James’s wedding ring with his ashes. On Monday night, after the funeral, I made sure I took the little storage dish, ring inside, and put it on the dining table, ready for the next morning. Early on Tuesday, I drove my daughter, Jenny , on a familiar route toward Lakewood Cemetery. The cemetery, a wooded, rolling piece of land adjacent to the city’s most beautiful lake, is less than ten minutes from our house. Although Jenny offered to drive, I wanted to guide the car myself. I felt I was on a precarious and delicate mission I needed to carry out personally. I wasn’t sure exactly what would happen or who would be in charge, but I knew the funeral home had taken James’s ashes a ring among the ashes 208 to Lakewood the previous day. Jenny and I arrived early. Two of James’s six children were just getting out of their cars. I instantly identified Lakewood’s representative, who I had been told would be waiting on the front steps of the main building. He looked as I expected, wearing a tasteful dark suit, glossily shined shoes, and a solemn expression. I walked over to greet him. Then I was struck by an awful image. “Oh, my God,” I said to Jenny, “I left James’s ring on the dining table!” It took me only a few seconds to try to dampen my panic and...