Our family celebrated my birthday just days ago, and for the first time in our 50 years of marriage, my wife was not there. But though she had lost her battle with cancer two months previous, she had a gift just the same.
How do you prepare for the final goodbye? Except to stay very close, which our family has always been able to do, we didn’t know how.
But she did.
And so it was that as we all gathered to blow out the candles and cut the cake, our three daughters were first each presented with a tiny box, and the explanation of how it came about that their mother had thought of these beautiful daughters of ours right up to the last brought many tears.
What, as it turned out, would be but two days before the end of our journey together, one of my wife’s two remaining sisters happened to be in town and so stopped by. The sisters had often visited together before but this time one came alone.
It was then that my wife slipped her diamond wedding ring off her finger, and gave it with whispered instructions to her sister. During that quiet conversation plans were made.
There were three diamonds in my wife’s wedding ring. What seems like yesterday I remember the sparkle – not so much in the diamonds as in her eyes – as we were announced as husband and wife.
Now, there, in each tiny box for each of our three daughters there was a silver necklace, and on the necklace a tulip, and on the tulip a diamond.
A diamond from their mother’s wedding ring mounted on a tulip, her favorite flower.
Deeply personal, very emotional, and wonderfully symbolic and beautiful – like our three daughters – were these gifts of a mother’s love to be forever worn close to their hearts.
Beautiful tribute, Dave.