It was a warm summer day in 2004 when Mary Grams was working on her family’s farm in Alberta, Canada. She was pulling weeds in the garden, something she did regularly, when she noticed that her engagement ring—an important part of her life for many years—had gone missing.
“I went to the garden for something, and I saw this long weed. For some reason, I picked it up and it must have caught on something and pulled [the ring] off,” Mary recalled, explaining how she lost the ring. She spent days searching high and low, even getting on her hands and knees, combing the garden to find it.
But it was like the ring had disappeared into thin air. “We looked high and low on our hands and knees. We couldn’t find it. I thought for sure either it… or something happened to it,” she said, her voice filled with the memory of that frustrating time.
The ring had been on her finger for over 50 years, given to her by her husband, Norman, back in 1951 before they were married. It was more than just a piece of jewelry—it was a symbol of their lifelong love. But despite all her efforts, the ring remained lost. To avoid worrying Norman, Mary kept the loss a secret.
She didn’t want to upset him, so she quietly bought a similar-looking ring and hoped that he wouldn’t notice the difference.
“I didn’t tell him, even, because I thought for sure he’d give me heck or something,” Mary later told CBC Canada, admitting her secret.
Over the years, life moved on. Mary and her family moved to a new place in Camrose, but they kept the old farm near Armena, a place that had been in their family for over 105 years. The garden, where Mary had lost her ring, remained a special part of their history.
In 2017, nearly 13 years later, something remarkable happened. Mary’s daughter-in-law, Colleen Daley, was in the garden, pulling up carrots. When she pulled one particularly large carrot from the ground, she noticed something strange—a glimmering object wrapped tightly around the orange root. As she got closer, she saw that it was a diamond ring!
“I knew it had to belong to either Grandma or my mother-in-law because no other women have lived on that farm,” Colleen said, stunned by the find. She called her husband over to confirm if he recognized the ring. To her surprise, he did. “His mother had lost her engagement ring years ago in the garden and never found it again. And it turned up on this carrot,” Colleen said, still shaking her head in disbelief.
The ring had been buried in the soil for over a decade, and the carrot had somehow grown around it. “If you look at it, it grew perfectly around the ring. It was pretty weird looking,” Colleen added. It was a moment that no one could have predicted.
When Mary saw the ring again, she was filled with emotion. She couldn’t believe her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It was quite interesting,” Mary said, laughing. And without hesitation, she slipped the ring back onto her finger, where it had always belonged. “I’m going to wear it because it still fits,” she said, smiling with joy.
Sadly, her husband Norman had passed away a few years before, not long after the couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. But for Mary, the return of the ring was a bittersweet moment. It brought back so many memories of their time together. It was like Norman’s love had found its way back to her after all those years.
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