The Widow's Ring

Grief, Memory & the Healing Power of Art, Part 1

My memory ring

When I was 11 or 12, Nanny, my paternal grandmother, decided to have her wedding ring remade into a cocktail ring. My grandfather had died several years before.

I found this odd. Her wedding ring was a lovely art deco design, and I could not understand why she’d want to take it apart to create something new, much less a cocktail ring.

Well, life has a way of kicking you in the teeth. I discovered her reasons, and what an unreasonable adolescent I was, on my own.

My husband David died of ALS/MND in 2022. He had just turned 52. I was 47.

I wore a wedding ring, but I was no longer married.

I was a widow.

Dave was not a sentimental man. He proposed to me shortly before my 31st birthday, to catch me, if not by surprise, at least off guard. He succeeded. I was deep in my academic writing, dressed in sweats, a mess. He tapped me on the shoulder, held out a ring box, and said, “So, you wanna get married?”

I was tempted to say no, to make him do it again when I was wearing makeup. Or at least a bra.

But it did occur to me that he might not ask again. And I wanted to marry him.

So I said yes.

At the time, I was still conducting fieldwork and it was important to me to have a plain wedding band, with an engagement ring that I could leave at home.

Knowing my preference for practicality, simplicity, and an ethically sourced diamond, Dave chose a gold band with a Canadian-mined princess cut diamond.

I wanted David to have a wedding band too. He was European in his attitude towards men’s wedding rings – he didn’t really see the point.

I told him in North America, not wearing his wedding band was false advertising. Such a handsome man, and women would think he was single. I was not ok with that.

He rolled his eyes but agreed to wear his father’s wedding band.

My wedding rings, with Canadian diamond, 2005. My hand after my ring was cut off, 2024

My body’s delayed reaction to stress is swelling. Once, at the end of my academic career, I gained 9.5kg/21lbs in 2 days. My hands swelled again after Dave’s diagnosis and during caregiving and I ignored it. Dave told me to go get my ring cut off. I couldn’t bring myself to get the rings that marked my commitment to my dying husband cut off from my hand. Even if the symbolism of it didn’t bother him, it did bother me. And so it stayed.

After David died, the thought of removing my wedding ring was overwhelming. It sent me into a slight panic and I had to remind myself that I got to decide if and when I would stop wearing the rings. But one day, maybe three months after his death, someone on our local Facebook group posted a question:

“I’ve inherited some of my mother’s and mothers-in-law’s jewelry and I’d like to have them remade into something I’d wear. Are there any jewelers here who do that sort of thing?”

Several people offered recommendations for local jewelers, but one name kept coming up: Dana’s Goldsmithing, a jeweler who specialized in making custom pieces from old, unworn jewelry. I looked them up on Instagram and fell in love with their work.

I didn’t notice they were in Port Perry, about 90 minutes drive north. I thought they were in my neighbourhood. By the time I figured it out, I was too entranced with their work to consider anyplace closer.

And that’s what this short series is about: how original art, made by an artist or by me, transmutes grief.

I’m not claiming that art alleviates grief, but instead that it creates something new in the space that’s filled with grief, something to focus on and hold on to, and that brings comfort.

This year, as I passed the second anniversary of Dave’s death and approach my 50th birthday, I decided it was time. I was ready to turn my rings into something else.

I wanted a right hand ring that honoured the love and commitment we shared and the family we built: a widow’s ring.

When David came here as a refugee, his mother pressed some jewelry into his hands, just in case he needed it. The small rose cut diamonds on what I believe was her wedding ring, redesigned in the 1960s from a pre-Soviet ring, were the best of it. All of the gold was excellent quality. Most of the stones were poor quality or synthetic. Did they know? Were those their choices or were they cheated at some point? I’m not sure. And all the people who would have known are dead.

Some of the jewelry used in my new ring

I handed over my engagement ring and this refugee horde, and my designer Linda cut my wedding ring from my finger. That first visit, my teens wandered around the lakefront, but my youngest accompanied me to the store. He had definite opinions on the design and colours and wanted to be involved. We chose a lab grown Alexandrite to represent his father. Alexandrite was David’s birthstone. Lab grown assured us it wouldn’t be sourced from Russia, which I knew would have been important to my Georgian husband. My youngest hugged and comforted me when I left the jeweler, ringless.

While we were in Georgia, Linda completed the design and I signed off on it. Discussing different choices with my boys was so illustrative of their personalities and attitudes towards life. My eldest said, “You’ll only do this once. Do it right.” My middle son said, “There’s no reason to spend too much on this. It’s just a ring.” My youngest was very clear on what was acceptable to him and what was not.

The stones we thought were sapphires, that in the design were meant to represent our sons, were synthetic. At my youngest’s urging, we replaced them with Montana sapphires, which looked beautiful with the Alexandrite and were ethically mined and sourced.

Original ring design by Dana's Goldsmithing. 3d model of ring.

We returned to Dana’s the next month, to try on the 3d model and make the final decisions before the ring was cast. My youngest was once again assertive about his opinion. “Those look like glass. These look like gems!”

We had Linda show us a rendering in yellow gold as well as the one in rose gold. “Oh! That looks cheap!” he said about the yellow gold.

It did not. Not at all.

But it didn’t look as stunning and luxe as the rose gold.

I chose the sapphires that “look like gems” and the rose gold, the same as David’s wedding band.

On Wednesday, eight weeks before my 50th birthday, I went to pick up my ring.

It is gorgeous and exactly what I wanted.

My middle son just told me, “You walked over here and every step your ring had a different sparkle. It’s kinda annoying.”

Although it’s only been a couple of days, I can tell that it’s doing exactly what I wanted it to do. (not annoying my kid, but bonus points for that!)

I’m wearing a beautiful piece of art and craftsmanship to remember my marriage, while also acknowledging that I’m no longer married. It’s comforting to wear. It brings me joy.

Have you used art to comfort yourself in grief? Let me know in the comments.

I’m enjoying two TV shows right now: Slow Horses (Apple), which is consistently great with an amazing cast, and Nobody Wants This (Netflix). If you can put aside this over-the-top caricatures of Jewish women, Nobody Wants This is the funniest show on TV. And it’s especially good with sibling relationships as well. Everyone I’ve recommended this to has binged it in two days or less.

Interested in our trip to Georgia? You can read about that here, here, and here. Curious how I met my husband? Here’s our love story.

Have a question for me? Submit a question to AMA anonymously here.

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