I lost the match to that earring twenty years ago, at my sister's wedding, somewhere between the reception hall and the parking lot. I remember getting home that night, taking off the one that survived, and standing at my dresser for a long time before I put it in my jewelry box instead of the trash. I didn't have a good reason. It was just a small gold hoop, nothing valuable, but throwing it away felt like admitting the other one was really gone for good, and some part of me wasn't ready to admit that yet.
It sat in that box for two decades. I moved twice. I cleaned that box out more than once, always meaning to finally get rid of it, and every time I picked it up and put it right back where it was.
This morning, getting dressed for my daughter's funeral, I opened that box looking for a pair of earrings that would go with the dark blue dress I'd chosen. My hands were shaking too badly to really see what I was reaching for. I picked up two earrings, put them both in, and didn't look in the mirror again until I was already in the car.
It was only at the church, catching my reflection in the glass of the front doors, that I realized I was wearing the broken pair — the lone gold hoop from twenty years ago, and a completely different silver stud in the other ear. Two earrings that had never once matched, worn on the worst day of my life, and I didn't have it in me to go back and fix it. I just walked in.
My granddaughter Ivy noticed before anyone else did. She's twelve, and she has her mother's habit of noticing things other people miss. She slipped her hand into mine in the pew before the service started and leaned over and whispered, "Grandma, your earrings don't match."
I told her the truth, quietly, because I didn't have the energy to make up anything better. I told her about the wedding twenty years ago, about losing the other gold hoop somewhere in a parking lot, about not being able to throw the survivor away even though I never had any real use for it. I told her I hadn't even noticed putting it on that morning, that my hands had just reached for whatever was there.
Ivy was quiet for a moment. Then she reached up and took out one of her own earrings — a small silver stud, almost identical to the one I was already wearing in my other ear — and held it out to me.
"Now we match," she said. "Sort of."
I didn't understand what she meant until she explained it, in the plain, matter-of-fact way kids sometimes manage to say the truest things: she wanted to wear the other gold hoop's silver stud, so that between the two of us, all four earrings would be accounted for. Half of us mismatched, but only because we were each carrying a piece of the other.
I don't know if either of us fully understood, in that moment, what we were actually doing. We just sat there in the front pew, passing a small silver earring back and forth until we'd sorted it out — me wearing the old gold hoop and one of her studs, her wearing my leftover stud and one of her own.
We didn't match. We never really matched after that, not exactly. But we'd both walked in that morning missing something we couldn't get back, and somehow, without either of us planning it, we'd found a way to carry a piece of each other's loss instead of just our own.
I still have that jewelry box. I still haven't thrown out the earrings that don't have partners. I don't think I ever will now.