After my dad passed away, I surprised myself by knowing exactly what I wanted from his belongings: not the tools, the books, or the antique furniture—but his teddy bear and his signet ring.
I didn’t even know its name, but I wanted that threadbare, unhinged little specimen.
That bear must be nearly a hundred years old now. It’s small and scruffy, head held on by two strings, missing part of a paw and one of its ears. The once-vivid fur is now a faded orange fuzz. Stiff and worn, stuffed not with plush or fluff like a Build-A-Bear, but with straw—hard and impacted, like the inside of an old scarecrow left out in the rain.
It doesn’t look like much, and it smelled of time itself—dust, cedar, and old, musty mothballs. But now it’s framed on my wall, like it belongs in a museum.
And to me, it does.
It’s a relic from a version of my dad I never really knew—someone soft, small, and in need of comfort.
That image doesn’t align with the man I knew growing up. My father was stern, stoic, and occasionally intimidating. Especially after I accidentally smashed his slab of antique Italian marble into a pile of rubble. But that’s a story for another day.
We didn’t have an easy relationship. At one point, we hadn’t spoken for over ten years.
The idea of him ever needing a teddy bear was, frankly, unthinkable—he didn’t do vulnerable, and he certainly didn’t do soft.
Yet, he kept it. All his life.
I only remember seeing the bear once when I was a child. It lived quietly in their bedroom, preserved from further deterioration, kept safe like some tender secret.
After he passed, I couldn’t explain why I wanted the bear so badly. It hadn’t played a role in our shared life. He never spoke about it. Out of everything that had been sold or given away over the years, that little bear made the cut.
And that spoke volumes.
Maybe it reminded him of someone he used to be, someone long buried under the responsibilities of fatherhood, work, and time.
The ring was the other thing I wanted. I had one made in high school, modeled after his. Mine has my initials and a deep opal that my brother, Bruce, brought back from one of his worldly adventures. Dad’s ring held a diamond nestled in front of his initials.
Both rings now hang out on the same chain, not always getting along but sticking together anyway.
They’re not flashy keepsakes or family heirlooms anyone would fight over, but they’re both solid reminders of a man I’m still trying to understand.
I didn’t want the bear because of its history with me. I wanted it because it had history. His history. Because he chose to keep it. And that tells me there was once a version of my father who held it tight, who maybe cried into its fur, who felt fear, loneliness, and love.
That bear—timeworn and oddly dignified in its frame—matters to me because it mattered to him.
Even if I didn’t know its name.
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