The Circle of Life..

It always amazes me how things have a way of finding their way back to you.  You lose something you hold dear to your heart.  You mourn its loss, even though it's just a thing.  You finally come to terms with never seeing it again.  Then after a few months, maybe years, it comes back to you.  I feel like that is something special.. like the thing you lost is MEANT for you. 

For example, back in 2002 ish, I had this great necklace: a cubic zirconium star on a silver chain.  I had bought it when my obsession with stars was at its height.  I had just gotten my tattoo, and the necklace was the perfect compliment.  I wore that necklace every day, no matter what, for about two years.  Then, in the fall of 2002, I lost it.  I knew I lost it on a visit home from college one weekend, but that was all I knew.  I looked and looked, and finally gave up.  Fast forward to the next spring, I went home for Easter Break.  I was walking from my car towards the house when something shiny caught my eye from the ground.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I realized it was my star.  All dirty and almost completely covered with mud, but beautiful. 

I mentioned in my last blog that I lost my grandmother's ring at my wedding.  My grandmother died about 8 years ago, and I had her favorite amethyst and diamond ring.  I wore in my wedding ceremony as my something old, to honor her memory.  That night, about 4 AM, I woke up out of my deep sleep and realized I had no idea what happened to it.  I knew it was gone, without even having to look.  But of course I looked.  I looked through everything I had with me.  We went home and looked through everything brought to the house.  I looked in my car.  I called my mother and sister in law to make them look through their cars.  I called the woman who runs the building where we married.  I had the man at the Bed & Breakfast where we'd stayed that night look through his stuff.  When I returned from my honeymoon, Carmen and I went back to the wedding place to look through the grass & bushes around the building for an hour.  I called Men's Wearhouse to see if it had somehow gotten into Jared's tuxedo pockets. 

All of this time.. nothing.  Three months of feeling a sense of loss.  I know it's just a material possession, and that it doesn't mean much in the real world, but I felt like I was somehow letting my grandmother down. 

BUT.  Yesterday I was walking around the back of my car.  You know that space between the back seats and back windsheild of a car?  Where there is always a bunch of dead bugs and no one ever looks?  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a HUGE dead bug back there.  I stopped and looked closer.. and there it was.  My grandma's ring.  Just like it had been there for 3 months.  How did I not notice it before?  How did I miss it the twenty times I looked through my car? 

Doesn't matter.  It finally came back to me last night.  Like Nana (that's what we called her) was just holding on to it for a while so I would remember her.  

But this ring is now even dearer to my heart.