The Ring

We’d been driving for about two hours now. Outside the black car the grass was lush, hilly, often occupied by cows. Damp wooden fences with wires in between, lined the side of the roads. The car followed the twisting road up its path. The sun kept peaking in and out behind the clouds. I could listen to Uncle Mark talk all day about Grammy. The radio was on, mostly static though. Tita Kathy was looking at the directions.

“So, she paid to have the granite smoothed down?”

From the back seat, in the rearview mirror I could tell he was smiling by the crinkles forming at his crow’s feet. He cleared his throat, “Yeah, she didn’t want that dude’s name on the family plot!” We all laughed. We couldn’t seem to stop talking about her, trading stories. It was like we were trying to uncover something we hadn’t known before but most of these I had heard before. That didn’t matter though. Then, we had gotten on the subject of her will.

I told them about the day that Mom, my sisters and I went over to Auntie’s house to go through the jewelry. She had some real nice stuff, but we couldn’t find the paper where she’d written down who she wanted to give what to. Mom and Auntie vaguely recalled a few items that were supposed to go to specific people, but it was mostly a free for all. We placed it all out on her living room floor and sifted through it all. I picked the opal ring. Mom said it had been some anniversary gift from Grampy one year; it was her birth stone. I picked a necklace and some brooches, telling myself I would wear them one day. I wasn’t just keeping them to keep them. Grammy had done some hoarding of her own: we found Grampy’s pocket watches. We put those in the pile that would be mailed to California.

Emily held something up. “I think she wanted Kathy to have those earrings,” Auntie said to her daughter who then put them in the California pile.

None of us wanted to be greedy and take too much, but we all wanted this green ring. It had a thin silver band, the stone was aquamarine, in the shape of a four-leaf clover with a little diamond resting on the top of the center.

“We all want to make a copy of it or something. It’s so pretty, but my mom said that it was left for her. She got it re-sized and everything, but she doesn’t even wear it that much. Maybe when she dies, I’ll finally get it,” I joked.

Uncle Mark looked at me in the rearview mirror, his blue eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. “Do you know the story about that ring?” I shook my head, and he began.

“Her dad used to be a mailman, but he died suddenly when she was nineteen. It was ’53. She was working at Craig Systems as a secretary then, so she had money of her own. She bought that ring for her mom. Four leaves to represent her four kids— and ‘cause they were Irish.” He looked out his window at the clouds and turned it off the radio. “She just wanted to do something nice I think,” Tita Kathy, put her hand on his thigh for a moment.

I was fourteen when mom got the call. We would miss a few days of school for the funeral. I remember packing up her room. We opened up one of her dresser drawers and found some old photos. There was one of Uncle Mark in a powder blue tux from homecoming. In another drawer there was a white satin nightie from Macy’s which made us all laugh. The strangest thing about those few days was when dad bought coffee, pretzel, and birthday cake M&Ms. He made a big show of ranking which one he thought was the best. At the funeral home I sat a few rooms away from the casket. That’s when I got talking to Uncle Mark and Tita Kathy. The priest had stopped by earlier. He said he wanted to talk about any exciting moments in her life to make the eulogy more personal. Mark started talking to us about how he was going to write something about the times she traveled with Grampy. They had been everywhere. In the States they had gone to California, Florida, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, and Alaska. They had also gone to the Canadian Rockies, Bermuda, Russia, Australia (Grampy ate snake here, he said it tasted like chicken), Italy, Puerta Vallarta, the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Amsterdam, and Ireland. At this point I had only been to a handful of states.

Uncle Mark and Tita Kathy had traveled a bit themselves, mostly for work though. “I’ve never left the country,” I told them. Fueled on funeral home mints and a lack of sleep we made a pact that we’d all go to Ireland together after I graduated high school.

Junior year Papa Jack died. Uncle Mark flew out from Cali. but Kathy couldn’t because of work. We went back and relieved that first funeral all over again: same hotel, same funeral home, restaurants, food, family plot. Grammy’s sister Marie came up to me near the casket and thanked me for coming like I had a say in the matter.

“You were really special to her, you know that?” Behind her glasses her green eyes welled up with tears she had been stocking up all morning. Later at the cemetery we stood around the opening in the ground, looking at the names and dates. Mark walked away from the pool of black jackets and dress shoes. Out of instinct I hugged him. I knew he was crying but I didn’t want to look, and I was relieved I wasn’t when he blurted out, “I miss them.”

It had been drizzling for a little while, but it was letting up now. “What else?” I asked. He cleared his throat, “Well, she gave it to her mom. So she was at Craig, they made the trailers that had radio equipment for the army and government stuff. She met dad like four or maybe more like eight years later? He was an auditor in New York City. And he would come to meet with the accountant, her boss, and he would always flirt with her when he came into the office.”

“Classic Frank,” said Kathy

Mark smiled, “One day he asked her out. Two weeks before they got married— I think like ’65, her boss got promoted, and so my dad took his job,” From the back seat I looked at him smiling to himself, “As a wedding gift her mom gave her the ring back. I suppose I don’t really know why.” And I supposed it didn’t really matter.

We parked the car and zipped up our jackets. The clouds were parting; the sun once again came out of hiding. The wind tousled my hair, whipping it around to the front of my face until I surrendered and pulled it up into a bun. A wooden sign stood at the front: Welcome to the Cliffs of Moher! The three of us walked towards the other tourists to the lookout. There were puffins out in the distance perched on a rock either unaware or unbothered by the watchful eyes above them. Kathy kept saying how lucky we were that there wasn’t any fog. The blue water crashed into the rocks below. To our left was O’Brien’s tower, a relic from the 1800s. The Cliffs were rough and aged with small patches of grass shooting through the man-made walkways. Straight from the heavens, through the clouds a stream of light hit the water. I like to think she was there with us.

Written Winter 2019

Art Credit: Helene Graham