Judy and Terry Pool’s Story:
Terry
and I were married 40 years when he became gravely ill with cancer and
then was taken from our family quite suddenly in 2002. The month
before he passed away, he took me to breakfast (on Mother’s Day) and
just like a man on his knees proposing, (he was not well enough for
that but I felt proposed to) presented me with the most beautiful diamond
ring – some would even say it is a bit ostentatious.
The
story behind his giving me the ring on Mother’s Day follows.
We were married for many years and together we brought 5 lovely and
wonderful children into the world. As things go, after 18 years
we separated from each other for 8 months. Like a lovestruck college
kid, Terry began courting me all over again, this time with much care
and the kind of typical courting he did when we met in 1961, complete
with dinners, candy, flowers sent at my job, waiting for me to get off
work to see that I got home safely, etc. Our children who were
growing fast at this point were aware of his motives and talked him
up to me all the time, and soon we were remarried in Lake Tahoe, Nevada
on June 30, 1979. He had me leave my plain band at home and gave
me a lovely ring he designed and had made for me which consisted of
two large (1/2 carat) diamonds and the birthstones of all five of our
children. It was so pretty and I was flabbergasted.
Soon
after our remarriage, we moved to Arizona. I wore the ring of
course every day until one day in early 2002 he asked me to give it
to him so he could have it cleaned and buffed.
I
gave him the ring. Several weeks went by and I asked him about
the ring and he sadly told me the jeweler (not Joe, of course) had misplaced
it. Well, I was as you might imagine very upset, but Terry had
the diamond “police” on the job, and assured me the ring would be
found and if not, he would replace it with the same design. Of
course, that was a solution, but I was still kind of “naked” without
the ring.
In
the meantime, the cancer presented itself and all thoughts of the ring
were put on the back burner while all of us—kids, grandkids me, and
Terry along with his doctors were fighting hard to heal him from the
dreaded disease. He was getting along pretty well when Mother’s
Day 2002 came around and he asked me to breakfast. Just before
our second cup of coffee he asked me to give him my hand and he brought
out of his jacket pocket a velvet ring box. I was thrilled and
said to him, “Oh, they found the ring!!”.
As
I described above, the ring had two large (1/2 carat) diamonds side
by side and our children’s birthstones all in a design of when each
was born. I expected the ring to be the same. As he opened
the box and then placed it on my hand, I could not believe my eyes.
All of the stones were now diamonds!!
He
said to me, “I love you and appreciate you and you and I both know
that when I first bought the ring with the kids’ birthstones, they
were quite small and now they have grown up so beautifully and all of
them are diamonds.”
Well,
the tears flowed and I was never so surprised that my husband, who was
not the most romantic guy in the world, had risen once again to the
occasion by being so very romantic and caring and had just bowled me
over.
When
our family lost him on Father’s Day – just one month after he presented
me with the ring, we were all devastated. We will miss him and
love him for the rest of our lives.
I
hope all young ladies or not so young ladies have within their lives
a love story such as mine. But it will take some doing to top
mine for sure.