Tarnished

I put the rings on yesterday because they were pretty. Both silver, one a tear drop shaped aquamarine surrounded by tiny diamonds, the other, two separate strands - one of tiny diamonds and one of rubies - raised over a fluted band.

With the bright sun shining thru my work window I was able to enjoy the sparkles from the rings, and while turning them on my fingers I realized that the backs, the part that sits palm-side, was tarnished.

Tarnished.

When I put them on, there was no emotion attached, they were just pretty and matched my outfit.

Both rings had been bought separately to represent something, neither of which now exists.

I bought the teardrop for me, with part of a Christmas bonus because I wanted to buy something that made me feel significant, more than the single mother who worked, payed bills, and tried to keep my teenagers from going over the edge or pushing me off it.

The diamond-ruby ring was to commit to a man who, after 15 years of being divorced, I decided that he could be the next only one. Guess what? Nope.

Tarnished.

A metaphor, perhaps? Cheap, but highly priced silver? Is that why I had put them in the box of rings that I would most likely never wear again but didn't want to throw away because they were pretty?

Funny how you forget to remember why you do certain things.

My question to you is this: what happens to the significance of the gifts after the event has ended? Does it just become a thing without feeling? Do you toss it? Regift it? Burn it? Ritualistically remove it from your essence? Put it in a box with all the other metaphors to remind you why you should never date again?

Tarnished. Such an opportunistic word.

It's a Funny Thing

I started working at Western Electric in North Andover, Mass in 1980, with 12,000 other people. Young, old, male, female, American born and not, a little community of faces and fingers, working to make telephone equipment for the world. A few months ago I joined the Lucent facebook page and since then, many of those same people I worked with, ate with, crossed halls with, have died. I see pictures of what they looked like at their death and some of their youth, and although the names do not sound familiar, the faces in all the pictures do. I feel that I knew them and at the same time, know that I didn't.

What does that mean?

Regardless of one's belief, I feel there is an organic connection between realms, between life and death, that should connect us when we are 'alive' but doesn't seem to until one of us leaves.

Why is that?

Do we value a life more when it is snatched away from us? Is the unkindness of people zapped from our minds as quickly as their lifelines have been snipped? How quickly we forget, how quickly we try to find some positive thing about them, or about us with them, and block the negative as we would a mad dog, if we could.

But mad dogs still bite.

And so do memories.

They say time fades all wounds but I don't think so. I think they just get pushed back and new ones get first in line because something - a smell, a song, a movement - brings us back to that haunt.

Maybe I said an unkind thing and didn't have the chance to explain, or apologize, or not even give it a second thought but now for some reason, it matters. The way I shunned a girl in eighth grade who may have been a best friend for life, that I never got to apologize to and who probably hasn't given it a second thought since, now matters.

What's the point then, of life?

I don't know. But I know it should matter because one day, they'll be looking at my picture. And then they will talk. I wonder what those words will be.

What would they say about you?