Remembering The Ring Poem by Patti Masterman

Mother died in the bed in the small, single hospital room
Beside one tall window which revealed
More concrete windowless walls, opposite an asphalt ravine
Where sometimes perhaps, ambulances
Pick up the newly deceased.

She died with that ring on her finger:
Nobody had taken it off; the pseudo wedding ring
Because her rings had become much too large
For her thin and bony, but still oddly elegant hands.
Out in the hall that night, at the most inopportune moment

I remembered the ring; but I could not
No- would not, attempt to take it off
Her poor, forever stilled finger; nor could I go back into that room.
Something in me was repulsed at the idea,
To remove jewelry from the dead

Even if still warm, and full of the thickening blood
Which had always loved me;
What if some small islet of cells
In some distinctly named gyrus of the brain
Felt that small tug, and then realized it's own death?

I visualized a small, quick moving, bent over man
Bug-eyed; predatorial with anticipation
Surreptitiously removing the small gold and black band,
Pocketing it after a quick examination
With a jewelers loup.

What is this talk, of stealing after death;
The name still attached to the cooling form-
Do we that quickly become moribund;
Nobody can go up two flights of stairs
To return a ring to the still living, weeping above?

Instead, I taught myself to visualize
A learned, serious figure, in a long lab coat
Meticulously prepping the body for cremation,
Finding the ring and instantly forgetting it;
Perhaps throwing it out with the other refuse

Of pacemakers, dental appliances and eyeglasses:
A holocaust pie of leftovers and deserted objects.
Perhaps other sons and daughters
Remember other lost mementos
Which mingle like bones now, in airtight coffins
Filled up with the metal survivors.