Too Special to Lose

Sorting through the mass of memories, room by room. That’s how I began to declutter our home. One of the first chores I assigned myself after I retired from teaching school, it’s been a circular task.

I’ve gone through the house once, and now I’m going through it again. Room by room.

The utility area is where I first began because it also serves as a hallway between the original part of our 1907 house and the addition. The pantry full of food is there, the cupboard of dishes, the washer and dryer. And baskets of lightbulbs, batteries, flashlights, and an eclectic assortment of tape, Scotch and masking and packing and gray Duck.

Basket by basket, I emptied and sorted and threw away. My husband wasn’t home, which is why I was able to throw away some of the clutter. Ian doesn’t do throw-away. Not happily, anyway.

I was having the grandest of times, tossing and sorting and organizing. A new beginning!

And then I found it.

A joyful, yes joyful, discovery!

A very special object we had deemed lost forever, Ian’s wedding ring.

In the bottom of the white straw basket that rested on top of the pine cabinet of glassware, the ring -- lost for years -- now rolled across the pantry floor. Ian must have reached into the basket to grab a lightbulb and the ring dropped off his finger. He had combed the grass outside our house with the metal detector searching for it, but we didn’t think to search the straw baskets inside the pantry.

I shrieked and cried and called Ian, who came home in less than five minutes (life in our small town has its perks!) and now he wears them both, the original and the replacement.

Memories are like that.

We lose them, even the special ones.

We drop them, even though we don’t mean to.

We forget about them, even though we try hard to hold onto them.

And we replace them, but they’re not the same.

And then, quite unexpectedly, they can reappear!

And when they do, we appreciate them even more.

Yet another reason to write down the moments that become the memories. Some things are just too special to lose.