The Ring That Wraps the Body

About this story

After caring for my husband with a terminal illness for two years, I was slapped because I forgot to wear my wedding ring. When I mentioned it, my friend, a traditional-medicine doctor, warned me: 'That is a ring that wraps the body. The inside is engraved with your birth date, and the outside with his name. If he lives, you die. One life for another.' Before we married, I knew my husband Tống Thuận Dương's family circumstances were not good. He had four older sisters, and his tuition depended on loans. Everyone around me warned me not to be deceived by him. But on the day he proposed, his parents sold heirloom gold jewelry, along with Tống Thuận Dương's two years of work savings, to commission a 3-carat diamond ring for me. The inside was engraved with my birth date, and the outside with his initials in a flowing script, symbolizing a promise to protect me for life. Tống Thuận Dương promised solemnly: 'I want to tell everyone that marriage is not a tomb but the beginning of a beautiful life. From today on, I will give you the best things in this world.' 'Your family has no one left, but my parents will treat you like their own daughter. You are the treasure of our whole family.' Only because of that sentence did I accept his proposal. Even after Tống Thuận Dương was diagnosed with a terminal illness a month later, I still did not leave him and cared for him for two full years.