Jessa Rose Pattie's footprints with an opal ring placed in between. Her mother, Elizabeth, is missing the opal stone pictured here.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Elizabeth Pattie

'IT'S ANOTHER LITTLE HURDLE TO GET PAST WHEN YOU LOSE THE REMINDER OF HER.'

KAMLOOPS - Last July, Elizabeth Pattie and her husband had to go through the hardest experience of their lives – losing their daughter just three days after she was born prematurely.

The day after three-day-old Jessa Rose Pattie passed away, Elizabeth's sister gave her an opal ring to remember her baby by.

"It’s really important because it was just something that I could remember her with and something physical that I could keep with me every day," Elizabeth says. "It reminded me of her."

But last Friday, April 7, when Elizabeth was shopping at the Winners in Sahali, she looked at her hand to find the opal had fallen out of her ring's clasps.

"I started crying in the middle of Winners and tore everything apart," Elizabeth says. "I just put it on Facebook to see if anyone had seen it too, because you hear these stories sometimes where really crazy things happen because of the internet. It’s not outside the realm of possibilitiy to get it back."

Elizabeth's Facebook post, which asks people to keep their eyes open for her precious stone, has been shared more than 70 times so far.

She recalls when she first saw the ring and how the flakes of pink spoke to her.

Elizabeth Pattie is hoping someone has found the opal stone she lost from her ring.

(ASHLEY LEGASSIC / iNFOnews.ca)

"When I was pregnant, I wanted nothing pink when I found out it was a girl – screw the patriarchy, right?" Elizabeth laughs. "Everything was pink that the nurses gave her. The clothes we got to hold her in were pink, all of her documentation... was pink. She was kind of free-willed from the start."

Elizabeth says the three days her and her husband got to spend with Jessa, who came about three months early, were full of pink and love. The ring Elizabeth's sister got for her reflected their short time together.

"We were looking (for rings) and there was this ring with a big pinkish opal on it," she says. "It was just... the perfect ring – of course you’re going to come to me in this pink thing after all of this pink stuff."

Elizabeth believes she lost the ring either somewhere between Zack's Coffee Shop and the Kamloops Art Gallery downtown, where she works or between the coffee shop and the Winners in Sahali.

She says although the opal can look like a pebble, she's hoping people can keep their eyes open to spot some coloured flakes if the light hits it right.

"As cheesy as it is, I felt like it was her speaking to me through that stone," she says. "(Getting it back) would mean way more... than a replacement. You go through the loss of actually losing her and then it’s another little hurdle to get past when you lose the reminder of her, too."

If you think you may have information on where the lost opal is you reach email Elizabeth at etpattie@gmail.com.

Elizabeth Pattie has used art to help her cope with the loss of her three-day-old daughter.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Elizabeth Pattie

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