Story of a Ring...

Looking back and looking forward

Years ago, I had a feeling I would someday turn a corner to find a guy I knew in college pointing a gun at me. Decades later, we reunited under the one streetlight in a southern Iowa town.

I had never expected to see Bill again after the funeral of my childhood friend, his ex-wife. He was an unwelcome mourner standing by her grave. Anticipating he could show up, I had written a letter telling him how he taught me how hate feels. I gave it to him before leaving the gravesite. I didn't want him to forget.

My friend (right) and me moments before her hair was shaved in preparation for surgery

The unplanned reunion happened years after the burial. A Des Moines Register reader had invited me to meet some women in her Chariton, Iowa home. As we went around the room getting to know each other, a guest smiled and said, "My daughter knows a friend of yours from college, Bill (she said his last name)."

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"He's been sober for a few years and is studying to be a minister," she smiled. "They live nearby."

When the meeting ended, I drove to the local Burger King, opening the phone book near the payphone. His name was listed, I dialed the number, and he answered.

"Wills?" I asked without introduction. We hadn't spoken in 10 years.

"Oh my God, Jules," he said. Then added, "This will teach me to watch what I pray for."

We met under the street light, a bug magnet that time of year. I followed his truck on the dirt road to his house.

His wife opened the door as we approached their home. She looked like him in a way, with bushy, curly, long golden hair, and she said: "Thank God you've come."

The three of us were seated around their Formica-topped kitchen table. Bill explained the two of them had fallen in love while he was still married to my friend.

A little girl with hair just like theirs popped in and out, curious. They don't get many visitors, especially at that time of night. Their easy family banter showed me a side of Bill I hadn't imagined.

I didn't envision him in a clerical collar, either.

It was time for forgiveness, I said, which eased the awkwardness. We had been so young, so ill-equipped for what happened. Bill had a different kind of sickness at the same time: drug addiction.

There was a lot to forgive. The hardest was what he said to my best friend the night after her second surgery. She was in intensive care. Visitors were allowed two at a time, so he and I went in after her parents. He held her hand and asked her to sign papers to speed up their divorce. She was still hooked up to machines tracking her vital signs.

In time, I came to understand he was an addict, out of his mind.

But that night in his Iowa home, during our one-and-done reconciliation, he would make amends.

Bill noticed the gold ring I wore on my right hand. It had been his former wife's wedding ring. Before being wheeled in for the second of two brain surgeries, she had removed this last piece of jewelry and handed it to me.

"The ring. So, there it is," he said. They had designed them together.

He fetched the family Bible. In it was a gold cross he had made from his matching ring to hers. Also kept in the Bible was the letter I had handed him at the gravesite years before.

We talked about how young and ill-equipped either of us were to handle the emotions of supporting a loved one after surgery for a malignant brain tumor. Doctors had initially diagnosed her headaches as stress related to their impending wedding. A neurologist in Mayo gave the definitive diagnosis.

She lived four years after the first surgery but only a few months after the second.

Ours is just one story of what addiction can do to relationships. There are countless variations of this tale. Time in prison for an addict is often misguided justice. Had Bill been busted with drugs and served time in jail as so many are today, would society be the better for it? How? If the threat of prison for drug offenses were a deterrent, we wouldn't be building new ones.

The echo of this monster reverberates on and on and on.

Hunter Biden, the presidents' son, catapulted into notoriety by his father's presidential run. He will be releasing a book in April about his battle with addiction. Look for a lot more of these stories discussed around kitchen tables as a result. Maybe you have your own.

Forgiving isn't easy, but letting go and accepting what can't be changed brings peace.