Eternal Wedding Rings
As more and more people live longer, thanks to the giant strides in medicine in recent years, you find more couples celebrating their 50th, 60th and even 75th wedding anniversaries. Suddenly the words ‘…till death do us part’ – the vows that you take as you slip that wedding ring on - seems a very long time away indeed. It’s a wonderful feeling watching two people who have spent more years married than single, who have grown together, who still live two together as one. Very often it isn’t two lives they live – it just binds into one and you cannot envisage one without the other.
Maybe you go to a friend’s place and there’s her mother visiting. She’s lost her husband of 55 years and she is still the same, sweet, smiling lady you always remembered. And you wonder where she gets her strength to go on alone after having been so happily married for so many years. They always did everything together and seeing one of them without the other is almost unbearable. Then you notice something – she still has her wedding ring on – and it’s still on her ring finger.
If she notices where your gaze has gone to, she might tell you with a twinkle in her eye that for her, her husband is still around. It might have been 55 years ago that he slipped that wedding ring on her finger as a young, blushing bride. It might seem like an eternity ago that he promised to love and cherish her with that wedding ring. Well, as far as she is concerned, he might not be there physically but he is there doing just that in spirit with that wedding ring.
More and more older people are breaking with tradition and not removing their wedding rings when a partner passes on. Think about it – it’s such a beautiful thing! In this ephemeral world where everything changes and passes, isn’t it wonderful that some things don’t? And isn’t it great that there are people for whom the wedding ring symbolizes the love they feel that goes beyond just the physical presence of the partner?
Well, if you see someone you know and love keeping that wedding ring on as a memory of everything precious in her life, as a source of strength, as a symbol of love that does not die with death, well, you sure are lucky. Suddenly that wedding ring assumes so much more importance. It isn’t given to everyone to witness that kind of love that goes beyond to almost forever!
