lost wedding ring

The same day I was blogging about impermanence I lost my wedding ring.

Unbelievable, isn't it? My husband and I were married just in November, celebrating our ten year relationship. I had never worn a ring before and was still getting used to it.

I noticed I didn't have the ring on my finger as I was sitting at a coffee house working on my lap top. I didn't panic, figuring it had probably slipped off at home as I was washing dishes. The ring was probably a little too big for my finger and it had come off before when my hands were soapy. But the ring was nowhere to be found at home and eventually I concluded that I must have lost it during my run that morning.

Fortunately it wasn't an expensive ring. Just a band of surgical steel that we had bought from a vendor at a street fair. In fact I can order a replacement just like the one I lost from the same guy. But it's still a wedding ring. The replacement won't actually be the one my husband put on my finger during the service. It made me sad. When I realized it was really gone I called him up and explained what happen. "Oh well," he said. "What are you going to do?"

What are you going to do in a world where things come and go? Nothing lasts. It's the nature of things, including this thing we call our selves. A wedding band is a symbol of the eternal nature of love. I believe that. But a ring itself isn't eternal. What are you going to do?