The Story of The Three Wedding Rings - The A to Z Challenge - The Letter R

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2016
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?

Blogging every day.  It begins on April First with a topic themed on something with the letter A, then on April second another topic with the letter B as the theme, and so on until I finish on April thirtieth with the theme based on the letter Z.   The theme of the day is the letter scheduled for that day.

Rings
I wear three wedding rings. Each one is a plain thin gold band.  I tease Ross that I wear three rings because I am his third wife.  What can I say, that's my sense of humor.
Ross and I exchanged matching bands at our wedding.  For the first eight years of our marriage, it was the only wedding ring I wore.
In 2008, my mom got sick with the evil that is cancer.
At first, we were hopeful that radiation would be effective enough to allow her to still have a good amount of quality life.  But having gone through the experience of my father's cancer, I knew what a roller coaster ride it could be.
The radiation took its toll on her,  and we, her children, made the decision that it would be better for her to stay with one of us.
It took a little while before she accepted that she would not be going back to her own place.
I have vivid snippet memories of the days we all got together to pack up her apartment.  It was a hard few days.
At that point, she was quite depressed and no longer wanted many of the things that she seemed to treasure, like her favorite pasta pot.
I can still see her face, her cheeks reddened and her glasses foggy from the steam of the boiling pasta water as she drained the spaghetti in the dented aluminum colander.
She urged each of us to take what we wanted.   One sister took the bedroom set. Another took the rocker my mom always sat in.   My niece wanted the hope chest that my father had refinished.  I took the dented aluminum colander.
When she moved in with my sister, she brought her clothes, a few cardboard boxes filled with sentimental items, a couple of photo albums, her knitting needles and yarn and her jewelry box.
After her course of radiation treatments was completed, she had the required tests to determine if the radiation had worked.
I remember the visit with the oncologist when he told us that the treatments had not been effective and that we should make arrangements for my mother to have in-home hospice care.
At that point, we all decided that mom would come to spend the last months of her life with Ross and I.  We were retired and were thankfully able to care for her.
So once again we packed up her few belongings and moved her into our spare room.
Even though she was very ill when she came to stay with us she was still able to interact with us. She and I spent many hours together in the sunroom.
One day she asked me to bring her jewelry box to her.  There wasn't a lot of jewelry.  As she sorted through the box, she would pick up a piece, tell me the story of it and who it should go to.
One of the items was a thin gold band.
She told me it belonged to my father's grandmother, my great-grandmother.  She said I should have it.
I put it on my finger, next to my own wedding ring, and have not taken it off since.
So, that's ring number two.
Ring number three?  That's for tomorrow's post.