It’s not a safe place if you don’t remember where it is
WHERE are my rings?’ ‘What rings?’ I knew exactly what rings he was talking about. My husband’s wedding ring and his father’s wedding ring. They live on the pointed hat of a painted Buddha his sister bought us years ago.
When Niall came back from his brother’s funeral in Vietnam, in 2009, we built a shrine on our mantelpiece. We put Fintan’s urn next to the Buddha, then Niall tucked his leftover Vietnamese paper money under the Buddha’s arm and put his wedding ring (which he can’t wear because it discolours) onto the spike on its hat.
When his father died the following January, he added his onyx and gold wedding ring to it. And that’s where they sat until we moved them into the storage unit. I unpacked everything and there was the Buddha — but no money and no rings.
A spike of cold fear struck at my heart. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. That was not the correct answer. My husband and I operate in very different ways when it comes to putting things away. He simply puts things down when he is finished with them. I don’t mean throwing things on the floor; and never in a selfish, feckless way. It’s just that he likes things to be where he can see them so he knows where everything is. And he does. The downside of this is that everywhere I look there are little ‘shrines’ containing coins, receipts, Father’s Day cards, iPhone covers that are too good to throw out.
After a while this drives me mad, so I scoop everything into a nearby drawer, or a box where they live, untouched, forever. When things are important I hide them somewhere. Somewhere safe. Somewhere even I have no hope of ever finding them again. Under normal circumstances my husband would say, ‘You’ve hidden them somewhere. Where have you hidden them?’
However, the sheer importance of the things made me defensive, which made him panic and before long I was screaming, ‘Why is EVERYTHING my responsibility?’ And he was shouting, ‘Why do you keep MOVING my stuff!’
We’ve been together 20 years. We’re not going to change, but you have to open the steam valve occasionally.
This was a bad one though because there was so much at stake. His two most precious, sentimental items and I had ‘put them somewhere’. ‘Are they still in the storage unit?’ ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘PROBABLY?’ he roared. ‘THEY’RE YOUR RINGS!’ I roared back. ‘I would have TOLD you where I was putting them.’
I remembered doing that. I remembered saying, ‘THIS is where I am putting the rings’. I just couldn’t remember where. Alarmingly, neither could he.
‘Can you not remember me telling you? You were standing at the fireplace and I said to you, Niall, THIS is where I am putting your rings? We both know I forget things. There is no way I would have just put them anywhere.’
His jaw set. My shackles rose. ‘I did not throw away your father’s wedding ring, Niall.’
Leo passed by and helpfully suggested, ‘No but you might have put them in a Vincent de Paul bag?’
HE saw my petrified glower and my husband’s quivering chin and added, ‘… by accident like…’ But it was too late. The idea was in both our heads.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not do that. No way. They are in the storage unit,’ I said. ‘I remember now. I remember where I put them. They are definitely there.’ They definitely weren’t. Shaken, I went out to the utility room to score something naughty from the kids’ junk stash.
As I was reaching up for a bag of cheese puffs, I noticed Fintan’s urn on top of the fridge. His ashes are long since scattered, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw it away. Unless…. I pulled it down and opened it. And there they were. Two rings in a nest of paper money. I smiled. Cheeky Fintan messing with our heads from beyond the grave?
I put them back on the Buddha’s head and called Niall down. ‘They were in Fintan’s urn,’ I said. ‘Remember now?’ He didn’t. Or he said he didn’t.