“When my mother retired, she occasionally went to the mall and ‘window shopped.’ Once in a while, she came home sporting a diamond ring that had caught her fancy. She tucked it away until she had three ‘special’ ones. At a family get together, she went upstairs to her room and came down with her best diamond rings. For years before mom passed away, she would ask each of her 4 daughters to select the one they would like to inherit. She told each of us to pick the one we loved the most and told us we would receive the chosen ring after she passed on. Then, she’d go back up to her room and put them away for safekeeping.
I chose the ring her second husband gave her when they married. He adored her and lavished her with so much love and attention. One of my sisters admired the one with a vintage flower-like design, and our little sister picked the more modern set ring. Each ring seemed to suit our personalities. Through the years she would bring them down, we’d reaffirm our choices, and then back upstairs she would go. I never saw WHERE those rings were kept, except knowing they were in her bedroom. Mom would always remind me that at her passing, I was to retrieve the rings and distribute each of them to my sisters, but I never bothered to ask where in her room those rings were kept because there was ‘plenty of time.’
Mom tragically passed away from a heart attack at the youthful age of 65. After many days of funeral arrangements, family flying in and caring for our grief-stricken family, I remembered the promise to my mom.
As my sisters and I were going through her things, readying them for charity, I knew I had to keep an eye out for her beloved diamond rings. We searched high and low for weeks trying to find them. We went through every pocket, every shoe, files, cabinets, drawers. We thumbed through every book dozens of times as mom had a habit of sticking social security checks into a book until she decided to go to the bank. In desperation, we even looked under the mattress! The rings seemed to have vanished into thin air.
I was beside myself and heartbroken that I wouldn’t be able to fulfill her wish of giving each of my sisters ‘their’ ring. My sister and I are the ‘fixers’ in the family. We couldn’t ‘fix’ my mom dying, but I could at least ‘fix’ the promise I had made to her by locating these pesky rings.
One night I went into mom’s room, sat in the dark and tearfully told mom I couldn’t find the rings and I was so sorry. I told her I wished she could tell me where they were so I could keep my promise. A few minutes later, my 3-year-old niece woke up, toddled into grandma’s room where I was and asked me to read her a story. I was SO tired, it was SO late and I was grieving the loss of my mother privately. I just wanted her to go back to bed. But she was so insistent that I finally gave in and told her to get a storybook from her room. She rummaged through a box of grandma’s books that we had gathered to donate to charity, grabbed a blue book and climbed onto my lap. I said, ‘Toni, this is not a storybook and it has no pictures. Go get one from your room please.’ She insisted THAT was the book she wanted, and was as distraught as I was. I knew better than to argue with a toddler, so I settled back to ‘read’ the book. Mind you, for weeks my sisters and I had thumbed through those books many times.
As I opened the book, it opened to the center… and lo and behold it was a ‘fake’ book. Inside the cavity sat the rings I promised my mom I’d pass on! We had tossed and turned all the books dozens of times because of mom’s habit of sticking a check between the pages but somehow never discovered this one.
Mom has been gone for 20 years now but to this day, we believe she guided Toni to wake up, wander to me (not her parents’ room, mind you), pick THAT specific book from the pile and insist being read to. We truly believe that without divine guidance those rings would have been lost forever. Our families haven’t been to church for many, many years and didn’t used to believe in miracles, but none of us can think of any other explanation for how that little girl knew to bring me that book at that moment.
Thank you Toni and thank you Mom! I was able to keep my promise and we each have loving memories of ‘our’ rings that we proudly wear in memory of her. Finding those rings was definitely a ‘gift from heaven!”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Debbie Davis, 64, of San Diego, California. Submit your own story here, and subscribe to our best stories in our free newsletter here.
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