A deep personal reflection and yes, this post is a little bit long, but please bear with me because I share intimate parts of my soul with you sometimes.
My grandmother was born in 1904. By the time she was 14 years old, both of her parents were dead. Her mother, my great-grandmother, died in 1917 during childbirth. Both she and the baby died. The following year, in 1918, my great-grandfather was killed when he was hit by a train.
Just like that, six children were left without their parents.
My grandmother was the oldest, with three brothers and two sisters, and after their father died, those children were scattered to the winds. Some were put up for adoption. Others were taken in by people who said they would adopt them but never did. Instead, they were used as household help.
My grandmother ended up working in a boarding house and bar in Springfield, Illinois. That’s where she met my grandfather. He was the brother of the woman who owned the place. He was a Lithuanian coal miner, and my grandmother was the daughter of a Lithuanian coal miner.
They married in 1920. This is the engagement ring my grandfather gave her.
But my grandmother never forgot the brothers and sisters she had lost. Around 1930, she managed to find them and bring them back together. After all those years of being separated and not knowing where everyone had ended up, they were finally able to be a family again.
By the time I came along, two of them were already gone. One of her brothers, who had epilepsy, tragically drowned in a pond at the facility where he lived. Another sibling died of tuberculosis in 1946. But because of my grandmother, I grew up knowing my two great-aunts and one great-uncle.
She wore this ring for 60 years.
My grandmother was my heroine and my safe harbor. She was the person in my life I knew I could always run to. She died in November 1980 while I was on active duty, and eventually my mother gave me Grandma’s engagement ring.
After being worn from 1920 until 1980, the gold on the bottom of the band had become very thin. I took it to a jeweler and asked if he could build the shank back up so I could safely wear it.
He looked at it and told me the ring “wasn’t worth anything” and “wasn’t worth his time.” Those were his exact words.
I have never forgotten them. They cut through my heart like a burning sword. He saw an old, worn little ring that wasn’t worth much money.
I saw my grandmother.
I saw that 14-year-old girl who had already watched her mother and a new baby die, lost her father the following year, and then lost her brothers and sisters when the family was broken apart. I saw the woman who searched for them, found them and put her family back together. I saw the grandmother who was my safe place for as long as I was lucky enough to have her. I wouldn’t sell this ring for a million dollars.
So I still have it. I keep it safely put away, but today I was thinking about it and decided I wanted to show it to you. And yes, those are my 73-year-old hands. I’m a grandmother, not a hand model.
That jeweler taught me something without ever intending to. Never dismiss something because it has no value to you. You have absolutely no idea what it means to the person standing in front of you.
Sometimes an old ring isn’t just an old ring. Sometimes it’s an entire family’s story. A story of a hard life and a lot of loss. Of surviving the Depression, sending a son off to World War II and later burying that same son after extreme alcoholism, born from the terrors he carried home from the South Pacific, finally took him. Of my grandfather being severely burned while working as a landscaper in a cemetery. Of burying people she loved and enduring one thing after another, yet somehow continuing on.
That little ring was on my grandmother’s hand through nearly all of it. So no, Mr. Jeweler, maybe it wasn’t worth your time.
But it was worth hers. And it is priceless to me.