The precious is lost

I lost my wedding ring on Sunday.
One minute it was on my finger, and the next time I looked at my hands, it was gone.
Somewhere between church, my car and Moe's, it dislodged itself from my finger, where it had happily sat for seven years and four months.
That's not entirely true. I did lose it once before, and when my wife and I were moving into our new house, it came tumbling out of a recliner. That was roughly seven years ago.
I have put on my wedding ring faithfully every day since then. Mostly out of love for my wife, but partly to prove to other women, yes, some one did find me attractive enough to marry me.
I take it off every night, because in the early days it would slip off in my sleep, and put it on every morning.
That's why when my wife suggested maybe I had just forgotten to put in on Sunday I knew that was not the case.
I checked anyway. The ring was not in its box. Nor was it in my car, or anywhere I searched at the church.
That left one possibility, Moe's, the restaurant where my wife and I had lunch with some friends after church.
I had already alerted the staff before I left the first time that my ring was missing and to please be on the lookout for it.
But I was so wracked with anxiety over losing it that I returned to the restaurant after exhausting other search options that same day.
"Welcome to Moe's!" came the enthusiastic shouts as I entered for the second time.
"Yeah, yeah, look, I'm not that happy right now," I thought.
There was a family seated at the booth we had previously occupied, and I politely asked them if I could unseat them and rummage around their space.
They were very understanding, and helped me look. Nothing.
The elderly group in the adjacent booth gave me a look that made it very clear they would not be getting up. It didn't really matter. The booths there are boxed in, so if it slipped below it couldn't have bounced anywhere.
I went up to the register.
"Can I go through your garbage?" I asked.
"You want some gloves?" several voices asked in unison.
"Yes, please."
So, there I was, pawing through discarded salsa, beef, guacamole, cheese and tortilla chips like a common raccoon.
Maybe the gloves made me look like some sort of CSI person of importance, but I doubt it. I certainly felt more like vermin.
It was all to no avail.
The next day my wife and I stopped by my parents' house, and I was telling my mom about losing my ring.
"You know, Benjamin, that exact same thing happened to me," she said, relaying a story about how she lost her wedding ring at the elementary school where she used to teach.
Only in her story, a kindergartner found the ring and turned it in, so she got it back.
That's great mom, so happy for you. Do you know any other ring-sniffing kids I could turn loose in a Mexican restaurant?
I'm still hoping it will turn up somewhere. A quick fitting at a local jeweler determined I had gone down an entire size since my wedding, explaining why the ring might have been loose. The price of gold has tripled since 2004, so I don't plan on buying a replacement immediately.
And, really, I don't want a replacement. I want my wedding ring. The one my wife picked out for me and has reminded me nearly every day since how lucky I am just by glancing at my left hand.
I still consider myself a lucky person, even if some bad luck hit on Sunday, and I'm still happy ... seriously.