In his 51 years of marriage, Chris Brightmore, claims that he has never removed his wedding ring.
That is, until the week before Christmas, while visiting family in Dubai, when he went for a swim in the Persian Gulf and it slipped off his finger.
After saying a little prayer, he felt confident that he would find it, and he and his wife began to search for the ring but to no avail.
The couple returned home empty-handed (or fingered, as the case may be), but their son-in-law suggested they share their story in a local Facebook group, hoping the ring might be found and eventually returned to them.
Brightmore told local news,
We did, and the response was overwhelming. Among the dozens of kindly responses, one man offered to loan us his underwater metal detector and another said he had his own jewelry shop and that he would make me a replacement as close to the original as possible and, because of the intensely sentimental value, he would give it to me for free.
With the help of the metal detector, they returned to the area the ring had gone missing and restarted the search. After about two hours of searching, another couple swam up to ask if they were the ones looking for the lost wedding ring.
The man happened to be a retired professional diver, who was looking for a challenge. When Brightmore told him that he was in fact the man looking for the ring, he said the diver told him,
Well for someone who has been married that long and has never had the ring off his finger until now, it would be my honor to help you find it, if you would allow me.
Needless to say, they allowed the diver to help.
After a long search, they were almost ready to give up when the diver went down for a final check and came up with the ring that was buried about 3 inches deep in sand, 10 feet below the water's surface.
When the diver came up with the ring, Brightmore said,
I was delighted but, strangely, not surprised as I had, all along, the conviction that the ring would be found.
It may have taken a few days, but with the help of several Good Samaritans, his prayer was answered!
Brightmore says he'll be more careful with his ring in the future, but after wearing it for 51 years straight, I think he still has a pretty good track record.
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