THE RING

THE RING (1997) 

I wear the ring. Not proudly. Not happily.  Not often.  It’s not even legally mine.  It belongs to my 91 year old mother who is a nursing home and I’ve been in a quandary as to what to do with it.  She doesn’t know I have it or even asks about it.

After Mom was put in the psychiatric wing of the local hospital, I visited her the next day.  She was under heavy medication and could barely talk.  I remembered she had her diamond ring on when I left her there and in the turmoil I had forgotten to take it. Now it was missing.  The day staff did not remember it, but a night staff person remembered seeing one of the other patients wearing such a ring on his little finger.  Mom was in such a stupor she probably handed it to him not knowing what she was doing.

Every day I visited her for about five days as they tried to adjust her drugs and she was becoming more and more lucid.  Now the problem was to find a nursing home which would be covered by her HMO.  She wasn’t qualified for most because she could dress and feed herself.

I called the social services person at her former retirement community who had become a friend to ask for advice.  He said remove her from her HMO, get her reinstated on Social Security and she could move back and into their nursing facility because they knew her and felt it could work.

When she was released from the hospital, I drove directly to the Social Security office where a clerk came to the car to get her signature, she was immediately reinstated and I returned her to the place she had left two weeks before.  We had come full circle and she was very happy to be back.  She stayed in the same nursing unit until her death.

(Regarding the diamond ring). This was the only thing my mother owned after 90 some years on this earth, so she would never ever consider parting with it which is why I felt so guilty having it in my possession. She descended into total dementia and died at the age of 96 not knowing who I was.  She ended up legally blind as well.)