Like Charlotte, I am not a widow but I wear no wedding ring. As with her and divvi, I did not wear my ring -- a plain gold band -- full time for practical reasons. However, I wore it when I took my first weekend trip after my husband was admitted to LTC and I lost it on that trip. I have a plan to get an old family ring re-sized but I have been so preoccupied with work and managing my husband's care issues that I have not taken the other ring to the jewelry shop yet.
Mary, I'm so glad I was an inspiration! Doesn't happen very often. When DH was first placed he took off his wedding ring and gave it to the aide. Told her it didn't belong to him, because he wasn't married. I brought it home and have it in my jewery box. He often asked if I was still living up in Illinois with my husband and yes, he was referring to the first one, who I divorced in 1987.
You are not going to believe this . . . I found my wedding ring! I lost it when I went away for a weekend last October. Although I had emptied out my purse several times since then, this weekend I noticed a small tear in the lining so I made bigger hole in the lining and dug around and there was my ring!
Since my purse is a shoulder bag, I figure I have been "wearing" my ring for most of the time it has been missing.
Myrtle, that is quite a story. Here is another one: Larry did not wear a wedding ring, but he had a gold ring set with an onyx that he wore on his left hand little finger. It had been a gift from his first wife who was killed in a car accident, and he treasured it. As he became more careless and forgetful, he kept dropping the ring, and his aide in NY and I tried hard to encourage him not to wear it…but he insisted, and sure enough, it was lost. I scoured the house for it in NY, and was pretty sure it was not on the floor…just hoped it would turn up in the Heartland someplace…in a movers' box, maybe. Larry died without me ever being able to find that ring (I would have had him interred with it.) While clearing out "stuff" I gave DD a bag of non-breakable Christmas ornaments for her tree--pretty ornaments that the kids couldn't destroy and that were just too many for me to need, as I put up a smaller tree in the Heartland than I did in NY. Anyway, as they decorated their Christmas tree with the bagful of ornaments, she called me to say that they had found Larry's ring in the bottom of the bag.
I've wracked my brains, but cannot imagine how that ring got in there. I can only surmise that Larry came back from Heaven to visit us for Christmas.