When I was 20, I had an apartment in the Bronx, New York, on the top floor of a fifth-floor walkup. I could barely afford the $265 a month, but I worked three part-time jobs (while going to school) so I could pay the rent.
One late afternoon, I came home to find my front door jammed. The key wouldn’t work. I was looking forward to about three hours of sleep before I went to my next job, so I was beyond annoyed that I couldn’t get in. I pulled and tugged and pushed until, finally, the door opened.
I stopped at the doorway and saw everything I owned strewn around the living room. A thief or thieves broke the bedroom window by the fire escape.
The drawers to my dresser were overturned on the floor. The $200 I had saved to buy Christmas presents was gone. I expected that and didn’t care much. But I looked and looked, hoping to find my most treasured possession.
My grandfather’s ring.
It had no monetary value. It was a cheap thick band of gold-painted aluminum with a rectangular red stone the color of strawberry Jello.
A year earlier, when he was in the hospital, unconscious and dying of prostate cancer, I squeezed his hand, and the ring slipped off. I took it and placed it into my pants pocket. I thought my grandmother would want it, but she told me to keep it.
My grandfather was the most important male figure in my life. That ring was a part of him that I could keep. I looked at it often, and on Father’s Day, I gave it an exceptionally long glance that allowed me to think of everything I missed about him.
We listened to Mets’ games on the radio in his car. My grandmother and I cooked for this hard-working meat cutter who sometimes came home with hands so swollen he could barely hold a fork. We talked on the phone regularly, though I sometimes thought he was disinterested in hearing from me. He wasn’t. He was sick, and I didn’t know it.
When I found out he was dying, I knew that he wouldn’t want to make a fuss, let alone talk to him about it. He was as pragmatic as they come. He had cancer. He was going to die. Not much else to say.
So that ring served as a link to him when he passed away. Losing that ring, to me, was like losing the Mona Lisa. It was irreplaceable.
Fast forward two years, and I told my family I would move to Oklahoma for my first full-time journalism job. When I went to see my grandmother, she gave me a gift — my grandfather’s wrist bracelet.
Like the ring, it wasn’t worth anything. Like the ring, it was gold-plated. And, like the ring, I now had something tangible, something I could hold and see and serve as a reminder of everything we shared.
Moms often leave daughters some jewelry, so I’ll leave the bracelet to my son. He and I share a father-son trip each year. We just returned from Seattle and Los Angeles to see our favorite team, the Yankees. I’ve taken him to the best restaurant in Toronto and in Montreal. I hope to take him to Europe soon.
When I’m gone, I hope he looks at that bracelet every Father’s Day and sees more than a trinket.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday. He can be reached at raymarcanoddn@gmail.com
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