St. Patrick's Day

A year ago on St. Patrick's Day 2013, I asked a half-Irish girl to marry me... and she said yes. For my birthday in 2011, shortly after we'd started dating, she gave me a claddagh ring, which I considered the sweetest thing anyone had ever given me, and I was proud and nervous and happy and excited to get down on one knee in a Japanese restaurant (yes, we had sushi for St. Paddy's) and give her a diamond ring and propose to her a year and a half later. While I was fairly certain she was going to agree (we'd talked about marriage), I was still thrilled to hear it, and I was looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her.

Claddagh

Well, we all know how that turned out. While I loved Laura and her mom's big Irish family (as well as her German-descended dad and his current wife), and felt like they all loved me back, and we'd planned to have them all at our informal Biergarten wedding, Laura pulled the plug on all that, on me, and I'm spending this St. Patrick's Day alone. She gave me the engagement ring back on the last day I saw her, though I'd asked her to keep it. I've still got my claddagh ring, and while I hadn't been wearing it since the break-up, I've got it on today, with the point of the heart symbolically facing away. I'm in a better place than I was six months ago, I think, but it's hard to let go completely. As the song says, there is always something there to remind me. Today's holiday is just another one of those.