Eric's ring, hope, and ashes
A piece of you
I got Eric’s ring back from the jeweler. I did not know what to expect or how I would feel about it.
Reader, I sobbed.
I couldn’t get to my car fast enough.
Parked behind the Great Harvest Bread Co., I just stared at it and cried.
I had prepared myself for this exercise to feel like a failure; a disappointment. But it wasn’t. It isn’t.
It’s all polished up, but they couldn’t polish out the deeper gouges and scratches and I’m so glad.
Neither of us were particularly sentimental; not when it came to material things, anyway. I don’t think Eric ever gazed upon his ring—eyes growing misty—fondly remembering our wedding day. I wouldn’t be surprised if he forgot the ring existed most of the time; he was just too busy living life in the present.
In my continuing search for something to hold onto, this ring surpassed expectations. It feels like a piece of him in a way that even the locket can’t. And it’s not necessarily because it was a wedding ring or a symbol of his commitment to me. It’s simply because he wore it for nearly two decades. It seemed to become a part of him like nothing else could. His glasses broke and were replaced, he wore out his clothes and shoes. He did not save ties from his grandfather or keep a baby blanket from childhood.
Most things were just things.
But if we were living in a fantasy series, and Eric wasn’t dead—only missing, and a witch needed something very personal of his to help me track him, that thing would be this ring. There isn’t anything else.
It felt like magic when I slipped it on my finger. I keep looking at it; moving my hand under the light to catch glimpses of the deeper scratches they couldn’t polish out.
On the day of his hip surgery the nurse had to help Eric get the ring off with some Windex. (Windex! Who knew?) His finger had a deep indent where the ring lived. I thought we ought to get it sized up, but Eric only rolled his eyes.
I sat in the surgical waiting room that day, his ring on my thumb. I remember twisting it and feeling a little nervous. I found myself wondering what I would do if the surgeon came to tell me they’d lost him.
Strange, isn’t it?
If the universe was trying to warn me, it did a piss poor job. It felt like any other macabre worry a parent or spouse might have. The kind that propels you out of bed at night to double check all the locks and make sure an axe murderer isn’t lurking in the hall closet.
In retrospect, that worried thought feels like subtle foreshadowing. It’s either the kind you only notice on a second read of a well-plotted book, or the kind where everyone in the movie theater knows what’s about to happen while the protagonist sits in oblivion on-screen. I can’t decide which it was. Either way, two weeks later, I was blindsided.
I designed my engagement ring myself—which is fancy speak for drawing it out on a napkin I still have somewhere. Monica’s ring had aired on national television just a month before, but I swear I hadn’t seen it. I just loved navy blue and wanted something a little unconventional. I had the thin wedding band soldered to it on our honeymoon, and after the below photo was taken, we added a diamond and sapphire anniversary band. Well, I did, really. Like I said, we weren’t overly sentimental.
I love my rings, but they’re a little painful to look at just now. Our rings were a package deal, just like us. And one doesn’t feel right without the other.
I find myself thinking back on my emotionally tumultuous late teens and early twenties. I grew up in a culture that taught me the absolute pinnacle of my life’s purpose was to get married in the temple and have babies as soon as possible. I’m not mad I did any of those things—it worked out well for me—but it certainly fueled this… drive to find my “eternal companion.”
I thought that once I found that person, I’d feel like I had truly arrived. I knew—or believed I knew—that once I was safely married and sealed to another LDS member in good standing, I would achieve a kind of belonging that I had craved my entire life. I would no longer be an awkward, fumbling young adult who everyone had been worried about; I’d be an awkward and fumbling, but bonafide, grown-up.
I wasn’t wrong. Once I had my engagement ring, I felt like my entire existence was validated. I thought that even if people thought I was obnoxious and unlikable, I had evidence to the contrary—real, tangible (and beautifully sparkly) evidence that someone else thought I was good enough.
I know. It’s a sad kind of story. I maybe wasn’t quite ready to get married if I didn’t feel like a whole person on my own. But our marriage was a better partnership than I could have dreamed. Sometimes people asked me how I trained my husband to watch the kids or do the dishes. I didn’t train him. He just came to the table with respect for me as the whole person I wanted to be. He saw me in ways I couldn’t see myself and over the years, taught me the true meaning of unconditional love. Others would ask how we could stand to work with each other. I admit there were days when I fantasized about one of us having a job outside of the home, but for the most part, we got along very well and worked together very well. And I think that’s because we both got to be our truest selves with one another. We daydreamed and planned and course-corrected, and when he wanted to protect me by shielding me from tough customer service issues or demands on my time he knew would overtax me, I let him. Because it didn’t feel patriarchal or controlling. It just felt like love.
I don’t want to pedestal him in death. We tend to do that, I think. We gloss over all the hard parts and paint the deceased as saints. Eric wasn’t a saint. We weren’t perfect. We fought and had our problems. In fact, the last two and a half years were the roughest years our marriage has ever seen, but our foundation was really good. The sum of our parts (all the parts; the good, bad, and messy parts) was definitely greater than the whole.
The me that lived with Eric for twenty years was the most authentic me I’ve ever been. I was my most true self when I was with him.
And now that he’s gone, I feel all broken apart again. I feel as insecure as I did on the first day of 9th grade with the wrong brand of jeans and a terrible new spiral perm.
I find myself examining these feelings a lot, because we were feminists (though I know that word is loaded). We believed some of the ideas we grew up with weren’t quite right. Eric didn’t feel like he was some magical missing piece to my incomplete puzzle. He saw me as a person in my own right; a smart, intelligent, creative person who only needed him in the ways he needed me. As a compliment. As a partner. Not because either one of us was less whole without the other.
But I feel less whole. Right now, in this moment, I am no longer complete. It’s cliche and tired and worn out, but I really do feel like I’ve lost my better half. I wasn’t being overly dramatic at his funeral when I said he was the best of us.
I can hear him snort laughing at that. He’d roll his eyes so hard he’d sprain his eye sockets. But he was just so much more confident than I was. Even as a shy, quiet teenager whose parents couldn’t bribe him to leave the house with money or the promise of car keys, he was perfectly content in who he was. He didn’t try to build himself an extroverted exterior to fit in; he didn’t morph into a completely different version of himself in order to go out and make friends. He just was. He said to the world, “Look, I just want to sit here in my room and read all the Terry Brooks books I own. I know it makes you uncomfortable that I don’t want to go to prom, but this is me.”
He always knew exactly who he was and let everyone else figure out how to deal with it.
I, on the other hand, am someone who is deeply insecure and craves acceptance and a sense of belonging. I am someone who for years, worked very hard to become whatever I thought others might want. I’d drive home from parties, social interactions, or even nights out with girlfriends feeling so confused. Who had I just been for three hours? Were all of these aspects just pieces of me? Or was I a lie? Did I just know how to magnify the parts I thought would best resonate? Or did I reinvent myself by the minute?
I never spiraled like that with Eric because I never felt like I had to put on an act. I never had to change the narrative or curate the right story. He got the whole of me like no one else ever did.
I want you to know I’m a mirrorball I can change everything about me to fit in
-Taylor Swift, Mirrorball
I am being awfully hard on myself, I realize. I do know that I have grown. I am not the same mirrorball I was at 20 or even 30. I have worked—especially in the last six or seven years—to become more authentic, to be okay when people don’t like me, or when what I say or who I am doesn’t resonate. It has been a difficult road. It’s going to be more difficult now.
The week after Eric died, I was on some kind of mission to cross everything I could off the monstrous list of things a newly christened widow must do. Fueled by shock and grief, I made dozens upon dozens of phone calls, weeping to credit card companies, the bank, the social security office, our health insurance, the funeral home, and more.
After the funeral there was a crash. I wasn’t productive at all. Friends helped me catalog cards and gifts so we could send thank-you notes, friends cleaned my house, helped me with laundry, and held me when I cried. All I could do was get into the car every night and drive around my neighborhood so I could talk to Eric alone.
I still drive around most nights and talk to him. Sometimes it feels like I’m talking to myself. Most times it feels like he’s there.
I tell him about all of this. How the kids are doing, how I’m doing. How I feel like I’ve been smashed to bits and don’t know how to put myself together again.
It feels like he tells me that he’s smashed to bits, too. That he misses us, that he didn’t want this. That he’s always near.
I hope it’s true. It feels true.
My culture has a lot of “I know” statements. We get up in church and tell the congregation that we know there is a plan for us here on earth. We know we’ll see our loved ones again. We know the church is true. We know, know, know, know.
It drives me bananas. It’s driven me bananas for a long time. I wish we could normalize hope. I wish we could normalize belief without calling it knowledge. I’d be a lot more comforted if people spoke their own truth, and not the version of truth they’ve been taught. I wish we said, “I hope I’ll see my loved one again,” instead of “I know.” Because I don’t know. And even though you feel really deeply that you do, you don’t. You hope. You believe. You have faith. And all of those things can be beautiful life preservers, but they aren’t knowledge.
I wish I knew. But I don’t.
I don’t know if I’ll see Eric again, but I hope I’ll see him again. Even if we are just stardust and light. I hope my particles find his particles and we can zoom around space together.
“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”
No one has said anything terrible to me. I understand where the religious consolations and the “I know” statements are coming from. A place of love, a place of hope. They stem from a desire to console, to help, to take away the sting of death. I can see that and honor it, while still not feeling comforted by any of it. The only thing that comforts me is the ability to admit my own fears, and cherish what small, but warm beliefs and hopes I do have.
Eric wanted to be cremated. He didn’t want a gravesite that we’d feel tied to or guilty over if we didn’t clean it up and place flowers every Memorial Day. He wanted us to take a trip somewhere beautiful and scatter his ashes together. He hated how much caskets cost and how predatory mortuary services sometimes feel. We discussed all these plans together, and I wanted the same things. But we thought we were talking about a far off future date when we were old and bent and ready to go. He didn’t know, and I didn’t know, that we’d be putting his wishes into action much sooner.
Cremation is not a common thing in my culture. The funeral director gave a surprised, “Oh!” when I asked about it during our first phone call. Cremation was difficult for our extended families to wrap their heads around.
People told me I could do what would be best for us; that Eric’s wishes didn’t matter now. But they did matter. They mattered to me. They mattered to the kids.
It was still a difficult decision. On the night he died, I’d made it back to the house and had the terrible awful conversations with our babies. A little after midnight, the phone rang. It was the donor liaison center calling to ask me about Eric’s organs. They were very kind and apologized for needing to square things away so quickly, but explained it was a time sensitive issue.
I thought of that scene from Return to Me after David Duchovny’s wife has died. He’s running through the hospital, covered in blood, and later collapses inside his home. Meanwhile, Minnie Driver’s family gets the call that there’s a heart available and her grandpa can hardly speak he’s so happy and grateful. It’s a different sort of movie. Eric wasn’t ever sure he quite liked it (except for the parts when Minnie is in Italy and he could translate for me). But it does a good job at the juxtaposition that is life and death. One life ending while another gets a new lease.
I had wanted to order an autopsy. I wanted to know exactly what had happened. But if we went ahead with the autopsy, they wouldn’t be able to retrieve any donated tissues.
I had to get off the phone and cry. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted the closure an autopsy would bring, but we had always wanted to be organ donors. I knew he would think it an enormous waste if I just buried all he had left to give… and I wanted to know his beautiful blue eyes would still be out there somewhere, looking at the world.
I called the ER and spoke with one of the nurses that was in the room with him. She read me the doctor notes. Cardiorespiratory arrest. Massive pulmonary embolism.
It’s wild, but until that moment, I didn’t really know. I don’t know why I didn’t know. I knew what a respiratory arrest looked like. Why didn’t I recognize it? When I made those terrible calls to my in-laws and my parents, I said through my sobs, “He had some kind of heart attack. He didn’t make it.”
And it was some kind of heart attack, I suppose. A clot blocked a branch of his pulmonary artery, and though he could breathe in and out, his body could not make the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen. He suffocated, and his heart went into cardiac arrest.
It’s so cold and clinical, typing it all out like that. It was awful and heart wrenching and traumatic and unreal and impossible. No one should have to watch their loved one suffer like that, but I’m also glad I was there. I’m grateful he wasn’t alone.
Hearing the doctor’s notes helped me make a decision, but I still wanted to see the inside of Eric’s lungs. I wanted to see how big the clot was. I wanted to pinch it between my fingers and break it into sticky pieces. I wanted to pound it with my fist and smear it across my cheeks like war paint. How? How could his own body betray him like this? How could such a small thing take down my giant warrior of a husband? How? Why?
I was able to call the donor liaison back and tell them to go ahead. And then I cried for different reasons.
The thought of the tissue retrieval team cutting him open and taking pieces of him made me crumple onto the kitchen floor and cry some more.
And I sobbed again (grief is very dehydrating) when, after days of deliberation, I confirmed the cremation. Just as it was difficult to think about his organs being taken, it was difficult to think about his body—that body that I loved—burning.
All of this pain is still here, in my cells, in my chest, in my heart. I hate that I had to make these decisions. I hate that I had to make them so quickly. I think I made the right ones, but still. It’s like a gash across my chest. An open, festering wound; so deep it goes straight though me.
I did have him embalmed so we could have a viewing. Eric would have been furious at the expense and the chemicals, but because Eric wasn’t 89 years old, it wasn’t just us mourning, it was a whole bunch of young family that needed to see him. And maybe we needed to see him too; I don’t know. I was able to rent a casket instead of buying one and really, it felt like a good compromise between what Eric wanted and our cultural norms. My youngest talked to his friend who lost his mom in May, and the friend told him having a gravestone was helpful. Once Ben said he thought he’d like one, that was all I needed to hear. Eric would have given him that. No question.
Plots are cheap in our tiny town, so my in laws bought us four.
We buried Eric’s ashes and someday, my ashes will be buried in the same plot. If it’s at all possible, I’d like them to open up his box and just mix our ashes together. Does that sound morbid? I don’t care. (Look at me channeling some of Eric’s steadiness.)
I haven’t sorted out the headstone yet; maybe we’ll do it in the spring. He’ll have the temporary placard (which is nicer and more substantial than I thought it would be) until then.
It was just family at the gravesite, and I cried into my mother-in-law’s shoulder. I said, “I can’t. I can’t.”
I didn’t realize it until just this second, but those are the same words Eric said right before he died. He was talking about breathing. I was talking about living.
But I can, and I will. I have to.
Jake carried the ashes from the funeral director’s vehicle to the grave. Eric was such a great big man; it was difficult to see him reduced to such a small box. I hate that his body no longer exists, but I don’t think having his body buried in the ground would bring me any more comfort. The few times I’ve been able to face the cemetery, I’ve been glad he’s not there, buried in the freezing cold.
They kept a smaller box of ashes separated for us. When it’s warm again, I’ll drive the kids to Jackson Hole and we’ll scatter those ashes along the Snake River like Eric would have wanted.
Eric’s ring continues to feel like a piece of home; a tiny place where I still feel like I belong. Maybe it will help me remember to be strong. Not in grief, because who can be strong in grief? But in finding my way and sorting out who I am without him. His ring feels better on my finger than my own wedding set ever did. And like Eric, I sometimes forget that it’s there.