Thanksgiving week 2013, nearly 20 months after my husband passed away, I bravely loaded my eight year old and three year old sons into the car and started the six hour drive to Disneyland. It was the first vacation the three of us had ever taken by ourselves. It was the most challenging emotional and physical experience of my life. I have run half marathons, competed in triathlons, hiked a difficult 14,000 foot mountain in Colorado, and still, this was the most physically and emotionally exhausting experience of my life. In a future chapter I will share all the details of this trip, which was not only challenging but a turning point in me feeling more confident that I could raise these boys by myself. However, in this chapter I focus on another momentous event that took place during this trip….

I relocated my wedding ring to my right hand.

Relocating or removing a wedding ring might sound like no big deal to someone who has not experienced the death of a spouse. But to those of us who have, it’s a decision and event that is charged with emotional angst. Nearly all widowed spouses toy with the questions “should I remove my ring?” and “when should I remove my ring?”

I have always been told that, in our American culture, the mourning period for a spouse is about one year. I have no idea if that’s true or where it came from but I guess it sounds pretty good. However, for me, grieving and mourning are two different things. I would like to think that I have stopped mourning the death of my husband but I will never stop grieving him. March 2013 was the year mark for Gordie’s passing but I was nowhere close at that point in time to being ready to remove my wedding ring from my left hand. Each month that ticked by after the year mark, I would look at my pretty ring and think “should I move it?” But I never did.

Until that drive to Disneyland.

Eight hours of driving (thanks to LA’s nasty traffic) is a long time for a widow to think while her kids are in back happily watching videos. As we drove past the stinky cows on Interstate 5, I briefly glanced at my hands on the steering wheel. I zeroed in on my ring before I looked back at the road. Silently I counted the number of months that Gordie had been gone.

Twenty.

Is it time?

I took a deep breath and carefully slipped the ring off my left hand. I held it to my lips, kissed it, and moved it to my right hand. I kept driving the entire time.

It feels weird, I thought.

I moved it back to my left hand. It felt natural. I could almost not even feel it on my left hand because it felt so natural.

And then I moved it again to my right hand.

Just keep it here for the drive, I thought.   You can move it back when we get there.

I drove the rest of the way to Disneyland.

That night, after I finally got my excited kids to bed, I lay in my bed and rubbed the ring that was still on my right hand.

Keep it there tomorrow, I thought. If you don’t like it, you can move it back.

The next day, I was very conscious about the ring being on my right hand. Not only did it feel different and unnatural, I also did not like that, without a ring on my left hand, I looked like an Unmarried Woman with kids.

I wonder if people think I am divorced, I thought as we stood in line for Pirates of the Caribbean. I looked around the line, with my dark sunglasses firmly in place, trying to see if anyone was staring at us.

I did not want to look like a divorced woman. From the day my husband died, I have been very, very sensitive about being mistaken for divorced instead of widowed. It’s not an unusual feeling for widows and widowers. It might seem somewhat crazy, or even judgmental, but many widowed spouses do not want to be mistaken for being divorced. Why? I think the answer is two fold. First, it was not by choice that our marriages ended. Our spouses did not opt out of the marriage and neither did we. Second, for those of us now raising children on our own, it’s not the same as divorced parents raising children.   We are solo parents. They are single parents. Generally speaking, divorced parents share child raising with their former spouse and there is a back up parent when needed. For widows and widowers raising kids, there is no back up. There are no nights off when your ex has the kids. There is no ex to divide and conquer multiple sports tournaments in the same weekend. There is no ex to help with a Science project. Widowed parents are on duty 24-7. I have many friends who are divorced and raising children and I do sympathize with them. But I am not ashamed to say that their world is entirely different from mine.

As the line for Pirates of the Caribbean moved along, I started wondering…wait, do they think I am a widow?

That made me even more unhappy than wondering if they pegged me for being divorced.

Are they looking at my ring on my right hand, looking at my young sons and pitying us?

I don’t like pity. I like sympathy and empathy. But not pity. I had spent the past twenty months avoiding people’s pity. I absolutely detest when I look at someone’s face and can tell they are thinking  that poor woman and her two kids.”

We got to the front of the line for Pirates and boarded our boat. I wrapped my right arm around Wyatt to keep him snug in the boat. I tried to hide my right hand under his jacket and put my left hand in my lap.  I wanted both of my hands out of sight.  Our boat pushed forward and silently glided through the waters of the ride that had been one of Gordie’s favorites. I looked at my boys’ faces and saw excitement and anticipation.

Enjoy this time with the kids, I thought, stop thinking about the ring.

I ended up keeping the ring on my right hand the entire trip. We drove home from Disneyland a few days later. As we left the Grapevine, I looked at my ring on my right hand.

Should I move it back?, I thought.

Nah.

My ring has been on my right hand since that November 2013 Disneyland trip. It’s still on my right hand today. I have moved it to my left hand a few times over the years, when I want people to think I am married. But other than that, it stays on my right hand where now it feels more natural.  It remains on my right hand even though I have been in a relationship for three and one half years. I’m sure people wonder why I still wear my ring when I have moved forward and am in a relationship with someone else. For me, it’s a reminder of my past, an artifact from Chapter One, and it also honors my marriage which produced the two loves of my life, my sons.

Does it bother my new Significant Other? Truthfully, I have never asked. I’m not really the ask permission kind of gal. Never have been. And I have no plans of taking this ring off anytime soon. But I don’t think it bothers him. Fortunately for me, my Chapter Two is very comfortable with who he is. He also is beyond respectful of Gordie’s presence in our life. Gordie might not be here on Earth, but his presence is still very much here. My Chapter Two has embraced that for the boys’ benefit and for mine.

So, nearly six years since my husband passed, my beautiful ring, a ring that was crafted by Gordie, a ring that is so 100% me, remains on my right hand. I love my ring. I love what it represents. I love what it honors. Will I ever take it off permanently? I don’t know.

Oh, in the spirit of being truthful and raw, which is the foundation of my blog, there is one “event” where I take it off. Whenever Chapter Two and I are, um…”getting busy”, I remove it and put it carefully on a table. Always. It just seems the right thing to do. For me, for Chapter Two and for Gordie.