My dad never wore his wedding ring, and it always hurt my mom. She noticed it early on, especially when she saw other men proudly wearing theirs. Whenever she asked, he brushed it off.
“I lost it after the wedding. No point replacing it.”
They were married for over thirty years—steady, loving, imperfect. And all that time, his hand stayed bare.
After he passed away, my mom found a small box in his bedside drawer. Inside was his wedding ring, perfectly kept, along with a note.
“I never wore it because I was afraid of losing it again,” it read.
He wrote about a night early in their marriage when my mom nearly died in the hospital. Sitting alone, terrified, he had taken the ring off, believing he didn’t deserve to wear it if he lost her. She survived—but the fear never left him.
He kept the ring safe, not out of indifference, but love.
“I didn’t need the ring to know I was yours,” he wrote. “I carried you with me every day.”
That night, my mom put the ring on a chain and wore it around her neck.
Love isn’t always visible.
Sometimes it’s quiet.
Sometimes it’s fear.
Sometimes it’s a ring kept safe for thirty years.
