The Gift of Concentric Rings*
From Anne, Whose Hands Are Generous
On May 12, 2025, Anne was rushed to the operating table for emergency surgery to remove as much of the metastasizing brain cancer that could be extracted without rendering her entirely dysfunctional. Just before going under the proverbial knife, she gave me three of her rings, concentric circles, to wear in her memory. She was far from sure that she would be coming back. She also said,” “I’ll love you all the time. And I’ll love you forever.”
She presses silver against my palm –
not for ceremony, nor for hope,
but because giving is the only language
her heart has ever needed.
Rings, three: entwined, deliberate
as the arcs of her laughter, the orbit of her love.
Before the scalpel and the hush of cold rooms,
before the word malignant grew roots
and metastasis whispered of wild, uncertain journeys,
Anne lifts my fingers, slides circles onto them,
one, two, three,
each a vow without beginning or end.
“I’ll love you all the time. And I’ll love you forever,”
she pledges, sealing the air with a promise
that is more real than biology, more stubborn than fear.
For the last nine months we’ve had a period of grace, a gestation,
as if her body, broken but not bowed,
holds space between this world and another,
her love spanning the distance
the way a ring spans a finger:
a gentle, persistent embrace.
I wear her gift at all times –
A shining witness to a promise kept,
a token that will outlast the ticking of clocks.
Her love, not lessened by incision or passing time,
wraps me, radiant and unyielding,
a circle as whole as hope.
*Concentric circles, or rings, are geometric shapes sharing the same centre point but possessing different radii, creating nested rings. They symbolize unity, balance, and interconnectedness, often representing expanding influence (ripples on water), growth (tree rings), cycles of life/time, or layers of meaning.
If you feel like keeping track of Anne’s cancer journey, I’m chronicling it here:
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/news/
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
