Misery Guts lost his wedding ring this week.

He went for a swim in sea with BB after work and when he came out of the water it was gone.

There was no point in being angry because it was too late and the ring was gone. Being angry wasn’t going to bring it back.

Instead I was consumed by an overwhelming sadness. You’re probably thinking that it’s just a ring and we can replace it, but the thing is it wasn’t ‘just’ a ring.

‘I feel like a little part of us is missing’

It was the ring we had engraved with our initials and the date of our wedding as we excitedly planned the big day.

It was the ring the vicar placed next to mine on his bible and blessed as he formally sanctified our marriage.

It was the ring I slipped on Misery Guts’s finger as we promised to spend the rest of our lives together.

It was the ring I squeezed as I gave birth to our first daughter.

It was the ring on the hand that comforted me when we lost our second baby – and then our third.

It was the ring I squeezed when I gave birth to our son, and it was the ring I squeezed when our third baby arrived after that.

It was the ring I thought would always be there, less shiny than it once was and showing signs of wear and tear – a bit like us.

It was the ring I imagined squeezing when we reach significant wedding anniversaries, when BB, Little B and Littlest B get married and when one day we’re presented with grandchildren.

But now it’s gone, and I feel like a little part of us is missing.

We’ve put up signs on the beach where it was lost, and we went straight back to the same spot at low tide in the vain hope of finding it among the pebbles. But bar a miracle I’m afraid it’s lost forever.

Apparently things dropped at the bottom of the sea don’t actually drift that far. The tide can take them forward and back in roughly the same spot for years. The irony is the ring is probably just yards away from our front door, rolling gently to and fro on the sea bed as we speak.

But I don’t think we’ll ever see it again.

I’m trying to take comfort in the fact it probably is still there, nearby as our family grows, and maybe one day it will wash up on the beach and someone will find it and read the engraving, and there’ll be evidence that a little piece of us was once here even if we’re long gone.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, like terror attacks and tower block fires, it is just a ring, but it was our ring. And now it’s gone.

Have you ever lost anything sentimental? Did you find it again, or was it lost forever?

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