Found and Lost - Trust in the Unknown
A story of found things and lost people, and learning to trust in the unknown.
Early in my relationship with my husband, my grandfather died. The timing was significant because it left my mother and her siblings to divide up a lifetime of things between the five of them. In that process, it was determined that I would get my grandmother’s wedding ring, a claddagh. She had passed when my mom was pregnant with me, and I had always felt a connection to her because of that. It was not a decision without controversy because I was one of five granddaughters from three daughters. So why me?
Later, in the move into my then-boyfriend, soon-to-be husband’s home, I lost the ring. I would spend over ten years looking for it. As we moved from city to suburbs, then state to state. As our family grew. In moments where I remembered the responsibility of being chosen to have it and having lost it weighed heavily on me. But I couldn’t find it. I accepted it may be gone forever.
Then, three days after I told my husband I wanted a separation and took off my wedding band, the ring - my grandmother’s claddagh - came crashing back into my life.
Literally, as my husband threw a small jewelry bag at me that had been in a box of old office supplies as we sorted out working from home during COVID. “What is this doing here?!” he yelled as it flew.
Hidden, inside a bag within the bag, was a ring.
I stopped when I pulled it out, a rushing in my ears, his ongoing raised voice relegated to the background. I had found the ring, my grandmother’s wedding band.
Or, really, the ring had found me. At the exact moment I needed it.
Remembering this real-life parable came up again recently as I lost a favorite bracelet on a hike. Six months into COVID, six months + six days into taking off one ring and finding another. Time has smoothed some things but kept the edges sharp on others. At this moment, instead of lamenting the lost bracelet, I could appreciate that I would find it again if I was meant to. Hadn’t I learned that lesson with the ring?
And taking it further, I now believed that if someone else found it, maybe they needed it more than I did. I could give that to the universe freely and willingly.
And maybe could I apply both of these teachings to my relationships, to people? To one I love, not the husband I had separated from, but the best friend who wasn’t able to take things further? The one who chose to exit my life around the time the claddagh came back in?
Could I trust that, like the more recently lost bracelet, it was for a bigger picture than I could ever imagine? Believe that the right people would come and go like the lost things, at exactly the right moments?
I believe I can.
I found the bracelet. Or, again, it found me. I wrote this piece weeks before I had the courage to share it. I had circulated it among my friends, ones who knew my story, and they affirmed it was press-worthy, but I was scared. Afraid of the vulnerability, afraid of the judgement. I sat in that fear, until I realized there would always be people who would judge me, no matter how much I felt I bent over backwards to please them. So I came here and hit publish.
48 hours later my son came running into where I was writing. “Mom! I found your moon bracelet! It was in the dog bed!!” and he handed it to me.
(Insert mind-blown emoji, but in real life) I know I had lost it on the hike. Did it attach to the dog? Did it matter? I smiled at the universe. I had been brave and the lost thing came back right when it was right. I rehooked it on my wrist (clasp was fine, no reason it should have fallen off) and vowed to be grateful for whatever time I have it in my life.
Images by me. Art in picture by Autumn Skye Art
