Sara Marberry

“You can keep the ring,” my soon-to-be  ex-husband said.

The ring – a brilliant, oversized aquamarine surrounded by tiny diamonds – had belonged to his mother, Verna. She had passed away from cancer at age 63 in 1983, which was the year before I was married.

I inherited a lot of Verna’s jewelry as a young bride, but the aquamarine ring was my favorite. Big and flashy, I only wore it on special occasions.

“Thanks,” I said. Except for a pearl choker necklace, the aquamarine ring was the only other piece of Verna’s jewelry that I wanted to keep. The rest went into the estate sale that was part of our downsizing process during the divorce.

I didn’t have a chance to get to know Verna very well before she died, but she seemed like a quietly elegant woman – far more cosmopolitan than her small-town Illinois roots would suggest. Like many of her generation, Verna had married young.

Her husband Joe, who was a local guy, left her shortly after their only son was born and was never part of his life. Verna suddenly became a single parent and left small town America with her son to make a life for them in the big city of Chicago.

Over the years, Verna made and saved enough money as an executive assistant to send her boy to college, purchase a condo in Evanston, Illinois, travel, and buy nice jewelry and clothes. She never re-married and was living with her spinster sister Bernice when she died.

I learned during the downsizing process that there were many possessions I had that I no longer wanted. Things that carried a lot of emotional baggage and reminded me of my failed marriage. After all that I had suffered, I thought I deserved to keep the aquamarine ring.

But more than three years after my divorce when I took the aquamarine ring out of my jewelry box and put it on my finger this summer, I knew that in order to fully move on, I needed to part with it.

“This ring belonged to your Grandmother Verna who you never knew,” I told my son Wes, gently placing it in his palm while we were on vacation together in Wisconsin in July. “And I think it’s important that you have something of hers.”

Wes looked at me, clearly surprised. He nodded, then turned to MJ, his fiancé, who stood beside him. Without hesitation, he handed the ring to her.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” MJ said, slipping it on her pointer finger because it was too big for her index finger. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, feeling only a small pang of regret. Letting go of the ring didn’t feel like a loss – it felt like a gift.

As the aquamarine caught the light on MJ’s hand, I saw not just a piece of jewelry, but a legacy passed forward—with love, with grace, and with the quiet strength of the women who wore it before.