I found a wedding ring tangled in the cemetery mower

Dear Delyara, I maintain a cemetery. This morning, the mower made a metallic sound near a row of older graves. I stopped and found a gold wedding ring caught near the blade. No inscription, just worn metal. I spent hours wondering where it came from. Did someone drop it while visiting a spouse? Did somebody deliberately leave it on a grave? Had it been buried in the grass for years? I placed it in the office lost-property box, but that felt wrong. A wedding ring is not an umbrella. Around lunch, an elderly man came asking whether anyone had found one. He was shaking. His wife died six weeks ago. He had been sitting beside her grave yesterday and removed the ring because his fingers were swollen. He thought he put it in his pocket. When I handed it back, he pressed it against his lips. Then he said, almost embarrassed, “I’m not ready to stop being married.” I told him he did not have to explain. After he left, I sat on the mower for a while. I spend my working days around names with dates beneath them. Death becomes practical when you cut grass around it long enough. Today, one small circle of gold reminded me there are people walking out of this place every afternoon still legally, emotionally, habitually married to someone beneath the ground.