The Weight of a Wedding Ring

The caller on Dear MOR had been carrying the same question for years, and it came out in fragments: a wedding ring she had pawned, a husband who had left, and a silence that had stretched so long she could no longer remember when it started. She told the hosts that she and her husband had been separated for some time. He had gone abroad, and the distance between them had hardened into something permanent. She was left in the Philippines with their children, struggling to make ends meet. At some point, she had taken the wedding ring—the singsing—to a pawnshop. It was the only thing of value she owned, and she needed money for food, for school fees, for the daily grind of survival. She did not tell him. She did not tell anyone. She just did it.

The hosts listened quietly. Then one of them asked the obvious question: Did she ever try to get it back? She said no. The pawnshop had given her a deadline, and she had let it pass. The ring was gone. But the question that haunted her was not about the ring itself. It was about what the ring meant. She had married him in a church, in front of their families, with that ring on her finger. She had promised to love him until death. And now she had sold that promise for cash. She wanted to know: Was she a bad person? Had she committed a sin? Could she ever be forgiven?