Ring From My Finger

I wrote “Ring From My Finger” about something my father said.

After his separation from my mother he remarried. Sharon was a brittle and antagonistic woman and my mom didn’t make it easy on her. Knowing my mother’s capacity for snark I would be tempted to give Sharon the benefit of the doubt if subsequent events hadn’t revealed her character.

When my father began his decline into the dementia which would rule his excruciating final 6 years she left him.

This would have been when I was 19 and 20 years old and living in LA. I would drive or fly back to Olympia on holidays to be with my dad and to try and support his care-workers who, unbeknownst to me, were stealing from and abusing him. Seriously, it’s a tragic tale that has no happy beginning, middle or end, unless you think this song somehow makes it worth it, which I do not.

In the midst of these sad and precious times, during one of his fewer and fewer moments of clarity I found my dad worrying his wedding ring and muttering how he couldn’t get it off his finger.