A Promise Fulfilled

Yesterday morning, I baked bread, and as I usually do, I took off my rings: my anniversary ring, my engagement ring, and my wedding ring. I went out to run an errand in the afternoon and realized that I hadn't put them back on yet. I'll do it as soon as I get home, I thought. Later that evening, as I was bringing my kids to their Scout meeting, I remembered that I'd forgotten. I woke up this morning and I still didn't have them on. And I didn't put them back on. 

I'm not sure how I feel about it. 

Tomorrow will be nine months since my husband passed away. In some ways, it feels like forever, and in others, it feels like just yesterday. In some ways, I've managed to move on, and in others, I feel like I'm still stuck in place. Part of me yearns for a tangible sign that I've survived, but other parts of me dread seeing a tangible sign that life is going on without him. 

Taking off my rings is a very tangible sign. Of what, exactly, I'm not completely sure. My independence, maybe. My resilience, maybe. My capability, maybe. My acceptance, maybe. I'm also not completely sure I'm ready for it. I doubt they're off for good; this feels like a test run. A few months ago, another time that I had taken them off to bake bread, I consciously decided to leave them off for an hour or two, just to see how it felt. 

It didn't feel right. 

I made it about half an hour before I couldn't stand it and I had to put them back on. 

Today, it still doesn't feel right, but it doesn't feel wrong, either. It's been more than 24 hours, I've left the house several times, I've walked past the ring holder they're sitting in and looked at them, but I haven't put them back on. 

I'm not doing it in order to publicly announce that I'm not married, but perhaps to help me accept in my own mind that I'm not married. That particular contract has been completed. Not broken, completed. It was a contract intended to last "as long as we both shall live." No-one broke that contract, it just came to its natural and inevitable conclusion. That conclusion just happened to come much earlier than either of us had ever expected or intended. But it was still a promise fulfilled. We had. We held. We loved. We honored. We cherished. We dealt with better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health. The rings that were given as a symbol of our love, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, did their job. 

They are still a symbol of our love. But they are also a symbol of a promise fulfilled. Whether they are on my finger or not.