I.

The woman at the other end of the phone asks whether I would like my husband to be buried with his wedding ring, and if so, offers to come by the house and pick it up. I hold the phone on my shoulder and look at our—my two grown, married sons. The ring is a plain gold band, no inscription, actually a replacement for the original plain gold band lost in the ocean.

My mind drifts to that day. My husband lifting our six-year-old above the foamy waves, like a jack-in-the-box. The same day our two-year-old momentarily disappeared, and we found him on someone else’s blanket. From exhilaration to frantic fear. And somewhere in between the ring vanished in the sea or sand.

Our—my sons voices recall me to the present. Both say they don’t want it. I tell the woman on the phone that, yes, he should be buried with the ring and thank you for offering to come by.

II.

The caller was one of the two gray-haired women from the synagogue who had visited that morning, twelve hours after my husband died. They told me the funeral would be in two days and they would take care of everything. They reviewed the death notice for the newspaper, what time shiva would be, what organizations to suggest for donations in lieu of flowers. I signed the funeral home paperwork without reading any of the print, regular or fine.

Did we want a limousine to take us from our—my house to the synagogue and then to the cemetery, they asked.

The cemetery, the Garden of Remembrance, we visited six months ago. My husband wanted to participate in picking out the plot. We’d looked at available plots in two sections. One site was crowded between other graves. I lingered a few moments too long at a headstone of a baby who’d lived less than a year, unable to imagine such a loss. I thought of our lively miraculous eighteen-month-old grandson and moved away.

The other site was on a hill overlooking grass and trees, and a highway off in the distance with cars moving noiselessly like toys. Tastefully sized headstones, well-spaced. Tranquil. A place, I told him, I could imagine visiting.

III.

The next day our—my older son asks if it was too late to keep the ring. He is sitting red-eyed on the steps opposite the front hall. I am leaning against the front door, balancing a just-delivered gift basket of fruit, cheese, crackers, and cookies in one hand while attempting to put down on the front hall table a just-delivered ceramic pot with a six-inch peace lily plant. One brilliant white tear-shaped bloom pokes out like a spy from the crinkly yellow wrapping.

His question vies for attention with the hundreds in my brain, which is overstuffed like a worn cushion losing its filling, a Thanksgiving turkey with bread stuffing oozing out its neck. That question was decided yesterday. Checked off the to-do list. Deleted.

Calling the women, asking them to retrieve the ring from the funeral home before the funeral the next day, and return it to me float through my mind and away like milkweed in the wind.

Yes sweetie, I say, it is too late.

IV.

That answer haunts me still.

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