Something that I wear every day. An 18-carat yellow gold signet ring that was my father’s, given to him by my mother when they were engaged in the 1960s.
The first time I wore it was for safe-keeping while my father had an MRI scan in 1999. It was too big for me, so I wedged it on with the silver ring I was already wearing; then I sat by his head at the end of the machine, playing Patience on the floor with a tatty pack of Piatnik cards I had taken travelling round Europe ten years earlier.
When he died that Autumn, my mother gave me the ring. I had it resized twice to get it to fit my bony fingers. When it came back from the jeweller, all the scratches and dents had been sanded and polished from its surface; all trace of him was gone, and you could see a reflection in it for the first time in decades. Now all the marks on it are my own.
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