And Time Marches On

The past few days have been filled with "arrangements." And phone calls. And returned phone calls, and FB and Twitter posts and everything else. Sometimes you don't realize how many people you know and touch, until they start reaching back out to you. My family and I really appreciate everything.

So, aside from the SNAFU in which the church wanted us to pay $300 for the repast food...never mind that my daddy been a member there since the 60s, on the trustee board and in the choir (that's a whole rant that I won't get into - but I reached out to someone and the choir is going to take care of the repast for us)...everything else has been pretty smooth. Today I went to the florist and picked out an arrangement from us kids, and also one from the grandkids. Did y'all know how expensive flowers are?

Anywho, let's get down to the point of this post: the ring pictured above. That's my dad's ring. It's on my hand now, but he wore it quite a bit.

Some time last week, during one of our visits with him, he started talking to me and my brother and asking where was his ring. :::insert BBM confused face here::: I wasn't there when he was admitted to the hospital, so I had no clue what he was talking about. My brother couldn't remember if he had it on or not. Mind you, his dentures were missing also. Gotta love hospitals.

I think I said before, he was pretty weak. Most times, you had to lean in close to him to hear what he had to say. Right after he asked us about the ring, we checked his bag of belongings and it wasn't in there (neither were his teeth, dang it). But he was adamant that he had this ring on. We told him we'd try to find it.

The nurse came in, and was trying to talk to us about something - I don't even know what it was. All of a sudden Dad says, "well, I'm tryna find out about MY RING!" This was the loudest I'd heard him the whole time I was there. My brother and I chuckled about it later. We said, he is really serious about this ring!

The next few days, we got wrapped up in the Francis House arrangement, DNR, and everything else. I'll be the first to admit - I forgot about the ring. I did not, however, forget about his "teefuses." Thursday night, I inquired as to if they had found them, and indeed they had. They were sitting on the table by his bed. He didn't ask about the ring that night.

Friday morning, when they called us up to the hospital to see him, my brother J and I were in the hallway talking to one of the palliative care nurses. LDR, T and my Uncle G were all in Dad's room. One of the nurses walked by and went in the room, and handed something to LDR. He held it up - it was a plastic bag with Dad's ring.

LDR exclaimed, "I told y'all Pops knew what he was talking about!"

I was laughing and crying at the same time. If you knew my dad, and knew how he is...it takes a minute for him to get worked up, but when he does - watch out. We knew he was serious about that ring. We also know he was in and out of being lucid, so we just really weren't sure if he had it on when he was admitted.

I wish I had the story behind this ring. I don't know when he got it, why he got it, and we don't know what he wants us to do with it, because he never said. I went to hand it to T, and he said, "give it to J." I went to hand it to J, and he shook his head. So, I wear it now. If either of them ever decides they want it, I'll gladly hand it over.

We found your ring, Dad!