Wedding ring found in ashes of family’s home
AMONG the rubble, where their beloved family home once stood, a husband managed to find something that turned his wife’s sorrow into a glimmer of hope.
Neill Kapp, 42, found his wife’s wedding ring in the ashes of their home on Monday morning.
The Rio Street cottage was gutted last week.
Neill and his wife, Colette, 40, managed to escape the blaze with their two children, Evan, 8, and Owen, 6, the night it filled with smoke.
Kapp said that the next day Colette was unable to stop crying about their loss and that of her wedding ring.
“She just wished she had grabbed the ring before we ran from the blaze,” he said.
“She was really crying about that ring.”
Kapp, a sales and marketing manager, said he had returned to their home on Monday morning and found the 18-carat white gold band with a diamond in a burnt jewellery box in the debris of bricks.
“I searched for about an hour and it was the only thing salvageable from the fire.
“Colette just needed that little push to feel better.
“I really never expected to find it. I just wanted to see if anything was salvageable.
“But now everything is gone. We never even packed bags. We have nothing.”
The couple were married in 2005 and Kapp had requested a specific design for the ring from a jeweller in Gauteng before they got engaged at a night club.
Kapp said after finding the ring he had called his wife and asked if he could stop by her office.
Colette, a financial manager, said: “I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think he would find it.
“The ring has such sentimental value. It is irreplaceable. I could get another made but it would not have been the same one.”
Colette and her two children returned to South Africa from Australia in January. Neill only arrived back in the country earlier this month.
Now they will start to piece together a new life.