The Class Ring in the Nursing Home Hallway

Dad looked down at his hands in his lap for a long moment.

“I told your sister in April,” he said, slow and clear, “to see to both of them. Both graduates. The same. I said, write them each something nice, Dorrie, and don’t be cheap about it. That’s what I said.”

Nobody said anything.

Darby had her hand on the arm of his wheelchair. “Grandpa, it’s fine,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want anybody upset. I just wanted you to see me.”

“I see you,” he said. “I see you just fine.”

Then he started twisting at his right hand.

He had worn that ring every day of my life. It was his class ring from 1956, gold, with a stone in it and the year on one side and a little plow on the other, because he had been in the ag club. He wore it farming. He wore it to my mother’s funeral.

His knuckles were big now, the way old men’s knuckles get. The ring did not want to come.

He worked at it with his thumb, turning it a little at a time. Nobody in that hallway moved to help him. We all knew better.

It took him most of a minute. Then it came loose over the knuckle, and he held it up in the hallway light and looked at it, like he was making sure it was the right one.

“Give me your hand, sugar,” he said.

Darby held out her right hand. He took it in his, and his hand was shaking, and hers was steady, and he slid that gold ring onto her finger.

It was too big. It went right down past the knuckle and spun.

She closed her fist around it to keep it on.

“Class of ’56,” he said. “And class of ’26. Seventy years. That’s a long time for a ring to wait.”

Kayla started clapping first. Then the other aide, and then Neva behind the station. Then Viola by the dayroom door, slow, with both of her big farm hands.

Then Mrs. Pruitt beside her in her wheelchair, small and quick, like she was keeping time.

They were not loud about it. They clapped the way old people clap in church for a baptism, steady and warm and for a long time.

Darby stood there in her maroon gown, holding her grandpa’s hand with his ring on her finger.

I stood just behind her. I did not clap. I could not have kept my hands steady enough. I just put my hand on her back between her shoulder blades and kept it there.

Dad did not let go of her hand. But he turned his head toward the nurses’ station.

“Neva,” he said. “I need you to do something for me.”

She came around the counter. “What do you need, Lavern?”

“I need you to call my daughter,” he said. “Tell her I want to see her this afternoon. Tell her to bring my checkbook and the statements. All of them. Tell her I’m not mad. Tell her I just want them.”

Neva looked at him for a second, and I watched her decide not to argue. She nodded once and went back behind the counter and picked up the phone on the wall.

I heard her say, “Dorrie, it’s Neva at the home. No, honey, he’s fine, he’s just fine. He’d like you to come by this afternoon if you can, and he asked would you bring his checkbook.”