There was an article in the NYTimes this morning about Padma Lakshmi and a St Christopher medal she always wears, given to her by her late lover. Here’s an excerpt from the article in which she talks about the grief she felt:
“Those first three years after he died, I didn’t date. I didn’t do much. I would just get all of my things done for work, and it was good to have work. And then I would come home and I found great solace in actually thinking about him. And I would just wrap my grief like a shawl, like a cloak around my shoulders. And I was comforted by his memory. And I don’t think grief is a bad thing. I think it’s an important thing for us spiritually, no matter what religion you are or subscribe to. I think grief is just love with nowhere to go.
And I am glad that I experienced that grief. My grief, I realized, was commensurate to the love that we had between us. My only regret is that I didn’t have longer to show him how much I appreciated him… And so for me, feeling his presence and living with him, it is a good thing. He still teaches me something. Time has given me a new appreciation for this astonishing, generous human being that was in my life.” Padma Lakshmi
I, too, have 2 pieces of jewelry I wear every day: a pearl bracelet my two cousins gave me after I finished chemo in 2008 and a diamond ring that Charlie insisted on buying in 2018 when we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in Paris. In my mind, the trip to Paris was the anniversary gift but he insisted he always wished that he had given me a diamond ring. I’m not much into diamonds, and resisted until we passed a tiny jewelry shop Apriati, 54 rue du Four 75006 Paris, www.apriati.com, with an imperfectly shaped diamond ring in the window. (Apriati, by the way, is the ancient Greek word meaning a strong desire for having beautiful possessions) We went in, ostensibly to try it on and I walked out with it on my finger. I think Charlie was happier that day than I was. We realized later that because we had been walking so much my fingers were swollen and the ring was actually too big. For several years I wore it with an Etruscan wedding ring and a ring of pearls, my other 2 favorite rings. Sadly, since Charlie died, the Etruscan ring and the ring of pearls can no longer get past my knuckle. I wanted to have them resized but resizing would have changed the character of both rings. I just couldn’t do it. They now reside beside C’s ring in a beautiful ring dish, a meaningful gift from my granddaughter. So I only wear the diamond ring and yes, It’s still too big. I wear it together with a simple gold band just to keep it from falling off. I decided that the gold band had to mean something, so it has come to represent the first year I lived without Charlie. I’ll get another sometime before March, 2025, to mark the second. In the meantime, the little diamond ring with its imperfections and irregularities reminds me everyday of how happy Charlie was that day in Paris.