Devastated is not a way to feel on holiday
Yesterday morning when we were getting ready to leave the apartment I remember hearing something metallic hit the granite floor in the room but then got distracted and didn't go back to look what it was. As I awoke from a siesta on the beach in the afternoon I suddenly remembered the tinkling sound and as soon as we got back I went immediately to check and it wasn't there. Not on the bedside table. Not on the floor. We moved out all the furniture, both the beds, and found nothing. J's enquiry at the reception brought a very aggressive maid to our room shouting in Spanish, pointing at the two rings on the cabinet then brandishing two fingers with scary false nails very close to my face. We even went to go through the rubbish, J rummaging past the bags full of litter we recognised from our own room to sift through discarded wet coffee grounds mixed with cigarette ash with his fingers and finding nothing. He is quite convinced that, feeling anything on the floor was fair game, she pocketed it. But I can't bring myself to believe that anyone would be that mercinary. That cruel.
All I know is that it is gone.
I don't know whether or not I'm surprised by how utterly devastated I feel. My eyes still sting, my head throbs and my cheeks are puffy from crying. J has, predictably, been wonderful - trying to console me with equal measure of "it's not the thing that counts, it's us being together" and being completely understanding and even saying with a sad smile that he's glad I was so attached to it. He's told me that he wants to get me another. The way I feel at the moment, I don't really know how I feel about that. The way I feel isn't about having a ring. It was about what the ring represented to me and any replacement won't replace what that particular ring meant to me.
It wasn't flash. White gold ring with a single, square diamond about one third of a carat in size set flush into the band. We chose it together - well, we found a style that we both liked, then J went off and ordered one to be made to measure in white rather than yellow gold. It took weeks and weeks and weeks to come back. Then one day when I was living in Stoke and he was still in Leicester he called me unusually early in the day and asked me to come to Leicester for the evening straight from work, but wouldn't tell me why. I drove the 70 miles from one city to another full of curiosity and some anxiety, not knowing why it was necessary for me to go back in the middle of the working week, and wondering whether something might be wrong. It was summertime, and still light when I pulled onto the driveway, warm in the late evening sunshine. He greeted me with a hug, flashed the ringbox and a broad smile at me and called my father as I stood and watched to ask for his permission to marry me. On the doorstep of the house he proposed to me and of course I accepted.
There was no particularly grand romantic gesture. The ring was a mere formality in some ways - we'd started talking about marriage and being married as a fait accompli for some time before. I didn't love it for what it was. I loved it for what it represented. J offered today to get a jeweller to make a replica. But I don't want something that looks like whathe ring t is lost. In the same way that when I looked at the ring I recall the sentiment and events that surrounded it, if I had a facsimile I'd just remember that I'd lost the real one.
In my heart I know that the object itself isn't worth the tears I've shed. But I miss it. I feel like I've lost a part of myself - a part of us. And it hurts.
All I know is that it is gone.
I don't know whether or not I'm surprised by how utterly devastated I feel. My eyes still sting, my head throbs and my cheeks are puffy from crying. J has, predictably, been wonderful - trying to console me with equal measure of "it's not the thing that counts, it's us being together" and being completely understanding and even saying with a sad smile that he's glad I was so attached to it. He's told me that he wants to get me another. The way I feel at the moment, I don't really know how I feel about that. The way I feel isn't about having a ring. It was about what the ring represented to me and any replacement won't replace what that particular ring meant to me.
It wasn't flash. White gold ring with a single, square diamond about one third of a carat in size set flush into the band. We chose it together - well, we found a style that we both liked, then J went off and ordered one to be made to measure in white rather than yellow gold. It took weeks and weeks and weeks to come back. Then one day when I was living in Stoke and he was still in Leicester he called me unusually early in the day and asked me to come to Leicester for the evening straight from work, but wouldn't tell me why. I drove the 70 miles from one city to another full of curiosity and some anxiety, not knowing why it was necessary for me to go back in the middle of the working week, and wondering whether something might be wrong. It was summertime, and still light when I pulled onto the driveway, warm in the late evening sunshine. He greeted me with a hug, flashed the ringbox and a broad smile at me and called my father as I stood and watched to ask for his permission to marry me. On the doorstep of the house he proposed to me and of course I accepted.
There was no particularly grand romantic gesture. The ring was a mere formality in some ways - we'd started talking about marriage and being married as a fait accompli for some time before. I didn't love it for what it was. I loved it for what it represented. J offered today to get a jeweller to make a replica. But I don't want something that looks like whathe ring t is lost. In the same way that when I looked at the ring I recall the sentiment and events that surrounded it, if I had a facsimile I'd just remember that I'd lost the real one.
In my heart I know that the object itself isn't worth the tears I've shed. But I miss it. I feel like I've lost a part of myself - a part of us. And it hurts.