None of those felt right.
Giving it away felt like giving Rose away.
Hiding it felt like shame.
And forgetting it isn’t something I’m built for—I don’t forget. I carry. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done.
I pick up the ring, and hold it in my palm.
The scratch on the left side. The worn gold. The groove on the inside that matched the groove on my finger for five and a half years.
I slide it onto my right hand. Ring finger. Right side.
It fits differently here.
Looser—the right hand doesn’t have the groove, the worn-in channel of years of constant wear.
The ring sits on top of the skin instead of inside it. A guest instead of a resident.
But it’s there. Present. Accounted for.
Left hand for the future. Right hand for the past.
I flex my fingers, look at both hands side by side.
The left is bare—the tan line almost gone now, new skin filling in the space where gold used to live.
The right carries the ring like a memory you keep in your pocket—not because you need it to function, but because setting it down completely would mean pretending a part of your life didn’t happen.
And it happened. Rose happened. She was real and I loved her and the ring on my right hand says I’m not pretending otherwise.
But my left hand is free.
My left hand is for Bex. For the cabin and the porch and the coffee mug she leaves in the sink and the future we’re building one replaced floorboard at a time.
Both hands full. Different things in each.
That’s how a man carries a life that includes both grief and joy—one in each hand, balanced, neither one set down.
I finish my coffee, grab my keys and drive to Earl’s.
The ranch looks better than it has in years.
Brothers have been rotating through—fixing fences, painting outbuildings, keeping the property from the slow slide into disrepair that happens when a man is fighting cancer instead of maintaining land.
The barn door hangs straight on hinges I replaced a couple weeks ago.
The south fence line is solid—my posts, my wire, my work.
The pasture is green from the fall rains and the bay is out there, sound and strong, running the fence line the way healthy horses do—for the joy of it, for the feel of ground under hooves and air in lungs and the simple animal pleasure of being alive and knowing it.
Earl is on the porch—in his rocker, coffee in one hand, the other resting on the arm of the chair.
He’s thinner than last week.
The chemo’s been over for a month now—palliative care, comfort measures, the medical language for we’ve done what we can and now we wait.
His color is wrong.
