I Want to Be the Girl With the Most Cake

On wearing my engagement ring in public as a widow on the market

My engagement ring, on a meaty, polished finger. Elle Woods approved. Scroll down to understand what I’m yapping about

Rob bought my engagement ring from his Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center hospital bed. 

It’s from Mociun, a fine jewelry and home goods boutique in Williamsburg that I describe as “like Catbird except cool and not twee.”¹ I always knew I wanted my ring from that spot, and I can’t deliver a more sound explanation as to why except “their rings were minimalist but not boring and I just like their vibe.” Do you need a reason beyond that? Rob and I even had an in-person consultation there in 2021, when we were trying to emerge from a relationship rough patch that ended up defining that summer. I tried on diamond rings well over the nebulous budget Rob had in mind, mesmerized by how a $21,000 ring shimmered in my iPhone’s camera. That one, in particular, was heavily featured in a video that I shared with one of my group chats. “We’re just looking,” I wrote.

The engagement timeline was often in flux (don’t ask why; it doesn’t matter anymore), but it was starting to look like I could expect a ring on my finger sometime soon after Rob finished law school. 

Instead, it was October 7, 2022, and sometime after sobbing on the hospital bathroom floor to my mom (“he’s gonna die, that’s what the doctors are saying, he’s gonna fucking die”), finding out that Rob already got the marriage license process started, and deciding to have a wedding in our backyard in a week’s time, I was on the phone with an employee at Mociun, asking if they could expedite their four-week resizing process to a few days because, well, “my boyfriend is dying.” They did. 

None of this is how I thought things would go.