August 10, 2026

Today was busy.

I spent part of the day doing something I’m learning is one of the crueler, quieter parts of losing your parents: handling their affairs.

There are accounts to deal with. Names to remove. Documents to find. Financial things to straighten out. Possessions to go through. Decisions to make that I don’t particularly want to make. It’s all incredibly practical and necessary, which somehow makes it feel even stranger.

Because these aren’t just names on paperwork.

They’re my mom and dad.

Every time I change something, close something or remove a name from something, I have to remind myself that I’m not eliminating them from my life. I’m handling the things that have to be handled because they aren’t here to do it themselves.

I know that logically.

Emotionally is a completely different story.

And then today, among all of those practical things, I found three little rings.

My parents’ wedding rings and my mom’s engagement ring.

I just stood there looking at them in my hand.

Three tiny pieces of metal that suddenly felt impossibly heavy.

Once upon a time, my dad put that engagement ring on my mom’s finger and asked her to marry him. They wore those wedding bands through an entire life together. Through good years and bad years, arguments and laughter, raising a family, getting older, getting sick and everything else that made up their marriage.

Now all three of them fit in the palm of my hand.

I don’t really know how to explain what that feels like.

When someone dies, you inherit objects. That’s such an ordinary way of describing something that doesn’t feel ordinary at all. Their clothes become clothes without someone to wear them. Their paperwork becomes something you have to sort through. Their jewelry sits quietly where they left it.

But some things still feel alive with the person who owned them.

These rings feel like that.

They aren’t valuable to me because of whatever the gold or stone might be worth. They’re valuable because my parents wore them. They existed through decades of a life that happened before I was even here and continued through my entire life with them.

They’re evidence of a story.

Their story.

And, in a way, the beginning of mine.

I think that’s one of the hardest things about handling someone’s affairs after they die. You’re constantly bouncing between bureaucracy and memory. One minute you’re dealing with an account or a bill, and the next you’re holding something in your hand that completely knocks the wind out of you.

There’s no warning.

Today was busy enough that I haven’t really let myself settle.

And honestly, I don’t want to.

So I’m working in the shop.

I’m finding things to organize. Things to move. Things to make. Things that require my hands and enough of my brain that maybe I don’t have to think quite so much.

Because if I stop moving right now, I think I’m just going to cry.

Maybe eventually I will.

I probably need to.

But right now I’m going to work.

And these three little rings are going somewhere safe.

I don’t know what I’ll eventually do with them. Maybe someday I’ll turn them into something. Maybe I’ll leave them exactly as they are. That’s a decision for another version of me on another day.

Today, I just want to hold them for a little while.

My dad’s wedding ring.

My mom’s wedding ring.

The ring he gave her when they decided to build a life together.

Three little rings.

An entire lifetime.