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The Ring

The other night I told some friends about what happened to my wedding ring. I gave this story a go at the family reception, but it came out to be about 45 minutes long. This one’s been condensed, thanks in large part to the person on my right. (Video by Pirco.)

PS:

There’s a classic thematic quote in Fight Club that says, “The trick is not to care.” Well, that’s easier said than done. Especially for a hopeless romantic.

Anybody who knows me knows that I’m probably the worst person for this ring fiasco to happen to. Just last month, I was sharing with a couple people that the biggest pet peeve I have about myself is that I’m so goddamn sentimental about things. I tend to identify and place an extraordinary amount of meaning on stuff, finding hidden coincidence and underestimated relevance in anything. This tendency always results in self-induced pain, and consequently made 2011 a pretty tough year for me. Particularly with Kona and the house.

To date, the November ring incident has had a lasting effect on my health. For the past month, I’ve been dealing with a quiet case of depression, anxiety, and insomnia, and my constitution has not been up to snuff. I really think it’s because of the ring. I’m a person who believes it’s possible for a person to die of a broken heart, so it makes sense to me that my soul has simply been injured. It’s grieving.

As I mentioned verbally in the video, I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to get past the loss of the ring. Trying to find a safe place in my mind to file it away and let it go. Popular pieces of advice that people offer are, “It’s just a ring,” or “It’s only a material object,” or “You can just replace it.” On an intellectual level, I get it. But emotionally, I argue that IT’S NOT JUST A RING. IT’S NOT JUST A MATERIAL OBJECT. AND IT’S IRREPLACEABLE. Hell, if a wedding ring was as insignificant as some people make it out to be, then what would be the point of having them? They’re just material objects, so we might as well just throw our rings in the ocean, no?

Seriously, it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even bring myself to look out our wedding photos. Not yet. I just don’t want to see the ring. I can’t look. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

But I’m getting there. In addition to Thane’s awesome perspective he shared in the video, here’s another story:

I lost the ring the day before we left, which cast an emotional cloud on our final 36 hours. Borrowing reef runners and a broomstick, I must have gone back out to the end of the jetty a half-dozen times at low tide, with a mask, crawling around like fucking Gollum, looking for my precious. I was refusing to let go, refusing to accept that it was gone. That afternoon, M dragged me into the bar and recited a poem that my paternal grandfather actually had hanging on his wall for years. It’s called the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

It was there, over a Mai Tai and an ahi sandwich, that I realized I was sadly lacking the third. Or, at best, confusing the second with the lack of the third.

Later that afternoon, as I was finally beginning to accept that the ring was a goner, I got an unexpected Facebook message from an obscure friend back east. We’d met in Las Vegas last January during my birthday. His name is T.K., and we met over Guinness and hold’em at a cool spot called O’Sheas. He’s since read Under Angels, and we’ve been keeping in touch.

In his message, T.K. said, in not so many words:

Hey, man. Saw the photos of you guys in Kauai, and you look like you’re having a great time. Not to be a downer, but I’ve been thinking about you for the past few days. You probably heard about the helicopter crash in Maui last week…

[NOTE: Yes, there was a helicopter that went down the day we got in. Five people perished, including a newlywed couple from Pennsylvania. It was only the second day of their honeymoon.]

T.K. continued:

Well, we’re all dealing with some major life issues right now. My wife was a good friend of the bride. She and all the bridesmaids pitched in and purchased the helicopter tour as a wedding present. They’re all completely crushed, plagued by what-ifs, and having a rough time finding a place to file it. Just goes to show that life can throw you curveballs, and we should never take things for granted.

Wow. Talk about perspective. There I was, fretting over how to get past a lost ring, when in reality we could have been dealing with something unthinkably worse. The lesson is clear.

Anyway, that’ll do it for this post. It’s been therapeutic, and I think I’m getting to the point where I can finally sink my teeth into the wedding photos and start posting ’em. Thanks to M, Thane, T.K., Steph, Y, CBJ, Nayman, BL, and everybody else who’s offered bits of wisdom on how to move on from here.

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