It could never mean as much...

Four o-clock in the morning seems an odd time for conversation.
Unless you are a nurse and she is your patient.
I gave pills, fluffed her pillow, and checked her IV site.
And we talked.

Her face lit up like a tree of lights on Christmas morning.
Her eyes shone like a teenager in love.
And all I had said was, "Your ring is beautiful."


Her husband of 60 years passed away recently, but she is still so very much in love with that man.
The man who gave her a perfect, tiny diamond ring that she still wears snuggled up close to her wedding band on the fourth finger of her left hand.

She smiled and tears came to her eyes,
"After we had been married several years, my husband made some good money. One day, he came home with a huge two karat diamond ring. He told me it was for no reason other than he wanted me to have it. I hugged him and told him that it was beautiful, but that he should take it back. He asked me why and I told him that it could never mean as much me as the ring I already wore on my finger."

I thought about what she had said all morning.
It was the most beautifully touching thing I have heard in a very long time.
If only more people loved like that.
Imagine what kind of a place this world would be. :)