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If you were to ask married individuals which material asset they fear losing the most, chances are many would say their engagement ring.
In 2004, Albertan Mary Grams experienced this fear firsthand when she lost her engagement ring while pulling a sizeable weed from her garden.
“We looked high and low on our hands and knees,” said Grams in an interview with the CBC. “We couldn’t find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it.”
Concerned that her husband Norman wouldn’t react well to the ring – which Grams had been wearing since 1951 – being lost, she simply replaced it and moved forward.
Even though Grams lives away from the Armena, Alberta farm in which the ring was lost, the property has remained in the family for 105 years. Thus, the garden there is still being maintained.
One day, Grams’ daughter-in-law Colleen Daley was working in the garden and pulled an unusual carrot from the soil. What made the carrot so unusual was that it had an engagement ring wrapped around it.
“I knew it had to belong to either grandma or my mother-in-law,” commented Daley to the CBC. “No other women have lived on that farm. I asked my husband if he recognized the ring. And he said, ‘yeah.’ His mother had lost her engagement ring years ago in the garden and never found it again. And it turned up on this carrot.”
Daley explained that the carrot “grew perfectly around” the ring and that she’s “never seen anything like that.”
Sadly, Grams’ husband passed away five years ago, shortly after the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary. However, now that the engagement ring has been recovered, she plans to put it right back on her finger.
Concluded Grams: “I’m going to wear it because it still fits.”
-Adam Grant
