Losing your ring, especially your engagement or wedding ring can bring on a lot of stress. Thankfully this woman found hers, in one of the most unusual ways, albeit 13 years later.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on July 19, 2019. It has since been updated.
Being married or engaged, you might have always had that one scary moment when you temporarily misplaced your ring. The relief that floods in when you find it again is indescribable. However, 84-year-old Mary Grams from Alberta, Canada, lost her engagement ring in 2004 never to see it for more than a decade!
It was September of 2004 when Mary was working on her family farm and she suddenly noticed that her diamond-encrusted engagement ring was missing. Days went by as she scoured the ground for it, but she had no luck locating it. Finally, a visibly upset Mary told her son about it. “We looked high and low on our hands and knees … we couldn’t find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it,” she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “I cried so many times.”
The ring was a gift from her husband back in 1951. She was so emotional about losing her ring that she did not have the heart to tell him about the loss.
“I didn’t tell him, even, because I thought for sure he’d give me heck or something,” she said, according to The Guardian. “Then I finally went to the jeweller and bought a cheap ring. I only told my son, I didn’t tell nobody else.”
For more than a decade, the lost ring was kept a secret between mum and son. "Maybe I did the wrong thing, but you get so worked up," she told BBC.
For more than a decade, the lost ring made her regret that day in the garden. But fate decided to give her a pleasant surprise 13 years later when her daughter-in-law, Colleen Daley, was plucking carrots and she noticed something weird. There was a particular carrot that was oddly shaped.
Colleen claimed that she hadn't actually noticed the ring first when she plucked out the carrot. She even contemplated feeding the carrot to her dog! It was a good thing she decided against it. It was when she was washing the carrot that she saw a ring snuggly collared around it. “It was pretty weird-looking,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
According to the BBC, the carrot had grown straight through the ring, which made it possible for it to be unearthed after years of being buried in the soil.
When she brought it back, Mary's son, the only one who knew about the lost ring, immediately identified it. Mary was overjoyed and emotional to see her beloved's gift after so many years. "I recognised it right away,” said Mary. “They found it yesterday when my daughter-in-law was digging carrots for supper.”
However, she wished she had told her husband about it. He passed away five years ago, a little after the pair celebrated 60 years of marriage. She also said that he would have found the whole situation funny.
But now that she's found it, she knows to be more careful with it. “I’m going to wear it because it still fits,” she said. "If I am going outside or anything I am going to put it in a safe space. That is what I should have done," she said.
References:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/engagement-ring-found-on-carrot-alberta-1.4248131
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/16/canadian-woman-engagement-ring-carrot
