Wedding anniversary reflections

It's October 25, 2003. It's early in the morning on a gorgeous fall Saturday morning. I pull into a park-n-ride to meet a group of people I don't know to go on a hike on Mt. Pilchuk. As I pull into a parking space, I spy a very cute girl getting stuff from the trunk of her car. I think to myself that I hope she's going on this hike. She is. Her name turns out to be Aimee Richmond.

A quick kiss before the
wedding starts

We ride in the same car on the carpool ride to the trailhead (I arranged that intentionally). We chat. I like her. She seems more or less indifferent to me.

We begin the hike. Although her legs are MUCH shorter than mine and so she hikes a lot slower, I use the excuse of a healing sprained ankle to hike at her pace. We talk a lot, stop at the same places to take photos, and have a nice time. I ignore every other person in our group. At the top, she realizes that although I'm carrying a decent sized day pack, it's mostly full of camera gear and a bit short on food. She laughs at me and offers some of hers, but since hers is all healthy (I recall a bag of sliced bell peppers), I politely decline. She teases me some more, and soon we begin the hike back.

It's October 31, 2003. Halloween. We've agreed to meet at a singles party (cruise on Lake Union here in Seattle). I arrived to see quite a few girls dressed in various slinky and revealing costumes. I eventually find Aimee. She's dressed as a hockey player, complete with bulky pads, facemask, black eye and blacked out teeth. Clearly she's not operating on the idea that she needs to show a lot of sex appeal to meet guys. Go figure, she also has 4-5 guys surrounding her, chatting her up. Slightly daunted by my competition, I nonetheless approach her and say hi, hoping she remembers that we agreed to meet up here (though we did not go together, so it's not a date). She does remember, and I join the group.

"So, we did it. We're
married now."

It takes me more than half of the three hour cruise, but I eventually get rid of (outlast) the rest of the guys, and have Aimee to myself. We talk a lot. We have a few drinks. We even dance a little. After the party, we go grab a late-night breakfast at a nearby restaurant and I ask her if she'd like to join me on a drive to Leavenworth two days later. She agrees, and we have our first date.

It's March 17, 2004. We've just come back to my apartment after hanging out with some people for St. Patrick's Day. At one point I stop, look her right in the eyes and softly say, "Aimee, I love you." She smiles so sweetly, nods a little and says, "I love you, too." It is the first time we exchange those words.

It's April 2005. We're in San Diego on a long weekend trip. The last day we're there, we're sitting at an IHOP eating breakfast, and Aimee starts to cry (happily). I ask her if everything's alright, and she smiles and says yes, but offers no details. I let it go. A few days later, while having dinner with her, she tells me that she'd had an epiphany. She feels that God spoke to her that morning at IHOP and told her I would be the guy she'd marry. She hadn't felt that way about me before that point, but she knew it now.

I was caught off guard, and had received no such message from the Almighty. I had also passed the 'window' in which I'd wanted to get married and start a family. I had decided to stay single. But, I DID love her. I needed time.

She gave it to me, until she got tired of waiting and left me.

About four months later.

Two months after that, I reached a point of crisis and asked God for a sign, and I'll be damned, He gave it to me. The next day I told Aimee that if she still wanted me, I was ready. She did.

"She's Got a Way", by Billy Joel,
was our first dance

It's Thanksgiving Day, 2005. I called her father and asked his permission to marry Aimee. I tell him I will take great care of her, protect her, and provide for whatever she needed. I tell him I love her.

He gave me his blessing.

It's December 23, 2005. I officially proposed to her as we opened Christmas presents at my apartment (she was leaving for her parent's home in Indiana the next day). Although I was sure of her answer, I was still nervous. I needn't have been. She said yes.

It's April 29, 2006. I get dressed up in a tuxedo. Aimee gets dressed up in a pretty white dress. We meet at a gorgeoous stone church in Tacoma, WA (St. Luke's Episcopal Church). Aimee Richmond became Aimee Rhoads, and I became the luckiest S.O.B. alive.

***
Since that time, April 29 has come and gone five times. Each one was better than the one before it. Aimee gave 100% of herself to our marriage, and taught me how to do the same.

"Til death do us part." Wow, when you say that to someone, and you're in your 30's, you assume that will be SO far away, so long from where you are right now. You envison a long life together, raising children, building a life filled with happy memories (and some sad ones too - life isn't perfect for any of us). You imagine years of family vacations, date nights, soccer games, dance recitals, and other milestones.

We were so happy, and it only got better

You do not envision 'til death do us part' coming five and half years later.

You do not imagine having to sit your three year old daughter down and tell her mommy is dead.

And you do not imagine her telling you four months later that she wishes she'd died when mommy did so she could be in heaven with her.

There have been five great April 29th's since Aimee and I got married. On none of them did I ever think that April 29 would ever be such a sad, sad day.

More on the wedding ring

So, as you know, I'm trying to find Aimee's wedding ring. Short story: it doesn't look good.

Aimee and I on our wedding night

Initially Caroline thought her clothes (and thus her ring) might be in the purse/backpack she had that day. I'm not sure where it had been kept during the dive excursion, but it had made it back to the house in Florida and I'd brought it home. So this morning I located it and practically tore it apart looking for the ring. No luck. And the clothes she'd been wearing weren't in it either.

I then called the Coast Guard investigator in Key West. Didn't reach him but left a message, letting him know what I was looking for. He called me back later (I missed the call), and he left a message stating that they had not recovered those clothes and did not have her ring. Last place for me to check was with Jacobs Aquatic Center (JAC), which is where the group had done their training (in the pool) before they'd gone out on the boat. I had hoped that Aimee might have put her clothes (and ring) in a locker there. However, I'd been in those locker rooms, and the lockers didn't come with locks, and Aimee wouldn't have had one, so I doubted she'd left her clothes there.

I call JAC and spoke to someone in the concessions stand. She told me that any lost valuables that were turned in (like a ring) would have been taken to the manager's office. He wasn't in, but she'd said she'd have him call me. She was also VERY sad about what happened, telling me multiple times how sorry she was for my loss (JAC does not appear to have played any role whatsoever in this incident).

I don't know if the manager will call me or not, but I'm nearly certain the ring isn't there. That leaves only a few other possibilities:
1. One of the other law enforcement agencies that were on scene (shore) somehow took possession of the clothes (seems far fetched, as they would likely have been out at sea where the boat went down, and to my knowledge the Coast Guard was the only one present when the boat was brought up).
2. Aimee left it somewhere at the vacation house and I never saw it, and thus it got left there. Since the owner never called to say an item was found, it either WASN'T found, or someone found it and kept it (second one seems unlikely, there's not even a diamond in it).
3. Aimee put it somewhere in our luggage before she left, and I haven't stumbled on it yet. However, I pretty much unpacked everything, and no ring.
4. It's sitting on the bottom of the ocean a few miles off the coast of Key Largo.

And I'm afraid number 4 is the most likely option.

The ring is missing

"Man, this ring feels weird on my finger."

That was the thought going through my head as I tried to fall asleep on my and Aimee's wedding night. It was the end of a VERY long (but fun!) day, and I was exhausted. Aimee crashed pretty quickly after we went to bed, but I lay awake as I tried to get used to how the wedding ring felt on my hand. It was as is I couldn't get my fingers to fit next to each other correctly anymore, and the odd sensation kept me awake.

For some reason, this memory came to me today. It's probably because I can't find Aimee's wedding ring, and I'd like to have it.

my wedding ring, in a rare moment off my finger

I'd forgotten all about it until last night. I'm not used to thinking about her ring - I've got my own to keep track of. But suddenly last night I realized that I didn't have it, and didn't know where it was. I spoke to someone at the funeral home that handled Aimee's cremation, but they indicated the only personal items released to them from the funeral home in Florida was her swimsuit and the wetsuit she'd been wearing. They called the funeral home in Florida that had taken possession of her remains from the Medical Examiner's Office, and they indicated that the clothes were all they'd received. They also indicated that the ME would have turned over all possessions, so that meant that Aimee didn't have the ring on when she was brought in.

I recalled that the last moment I saw Aimee - shortly before she got on the boat - she'd been wearing shorts and a shirt. That meant she'd changed out of her clothes and into her swimsuit at some point. My guess is that wherever her clothes are, her ring is also, probably in the pocket of those shorts. And those clothes are likely one of two places:

1. In a locker at Jacobs Aquatic Center in Key Largo, or
2. In the bags of items the Coast Guard collected off the boat and out of the water at the beginning of their investigation.

Number 2 is more likely, and I plan to call the Coast Guard tomorrow to see if in fact they have Aimee's clothes and if the ring is there. If they do, but the ring isn't there, there's only one more place it could likely be.

At the bottom of the ocean off of Key Largo, Florida.

I sincerely hope that isn't the case. I'd really like to have that ring back. I know it's a small thing. I mean, it's just a band of white gold (she'd asked for silver, but I told her that she should at least let me get her one that was white gold, since she'd already let me off the hook for a diamond). :) Engraved on the inside is our wedding date, 4-29-06, and the word "ONE", indicating what she and I had become once the marriage was final. Mine has the same engravings inside of it. Nothing big at all, but it is important.

And like I said, I'd really like to have it back.