The Ring

I'm guessing that most of you who have been married for a long time remember when and where your prospective husband formally asked you to marry him and sealed it with an engagement ring (after all, our long-term memories are WAY better than our short term memories these days).  I remember the day as if it were yesterday.  I was sitting on the glider on our front porch in Northern Virginia and my boyfriend had come up from South Carolina for my high school graduation (Yes, I was pretty young).  While we were sitting there, he handed me a tiny box and popped the question. (Yes, I was VERY young).  Less than a year later, I was married and living in South Carolina--which turned out to be somewhat of a culture shock for me.
Anyway, several years later I was standing in line in the grocery store and all of a sudden realized that I no longer had my engagement ring on my finger.  What a sick feeling.  I had NO idea where it might be or what could have happened to it.  After several days of looking and looking, we read our insurance policy which said that jewelry loss was covered when it had "mysteriously" disappeared.  Well . . .wouldn't you think that was mysterious?  The insurance company didn't agree and so I more or less adjusted to the loss and went on about my life.
One day, not too long after that, I was standing in my neighbor's yard and chatting.  I was sort of scuffing my foot back and forth and happened to look down and there it was!  My ring was in the dirt of her flowerbed.  Evidently, when I had been digging up her extra grass to transplant into my grassless yard, it came off.  As far as I was--and am--concerned, it was a true miracle.
About three weeks ago, I was sitting at this computer and happened to touch my left hand with the right one and realized that my ring felt very rough,  I looked down and saw that there was no diamond in the setting.  Once again, I had no recollection of when that might have happened.  We searched in every nook and cranny hoping against hope that it would turn up.  No luck.  This time I was really heartsick because--at least for me--as I've gotten older fewer things are important to me and a ring that my husband gave me to begin our life together is one of the things at the top of the list.  He, of course, wanted to go buy another diamond to replace the lost one--but that wasn't the point.  It would take another 50 years for a new diamond to mean that much--and I'm really doubting that 50 more years is in the cards.  However, I did remember that I had a diamond that he bought very early in our marriage.  And so, I now have that resting in a new setting in the old ring.  And I also had a major piece of advice from the wonderful jeweler who said that everyone should get their ring settings checked every six months.  I'm saying this in case some of you are walking around with your special memories sitting in a setting that is also showing some age.  As they say, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Have I given up on a second miracle?  No, not really.  Ya never know . . .