After the family dinner, I began thinking about Walt differently.<\/p>\n
Not because I loved him less.<\/p>\n
Because I had finally allowed myself to admit that love did not make a person easy to understand.<\/p>\n
I had spent forty-two years beside my husband.<\/p>\n
I knew his habits.<\/p>\n
I knew his moods.<\/p>\n
I knew the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.<\/p>\n
I could tell when he was worried by the way he held his coffee mug.<\/p>\n
But I did not know everything he had thought about our family.<\/p>\n
That realization left me with a strange kind of grief.<\/p>\n
It was not the grief of losing him.<\/p>\n
I had already begun learning how to carry that.<\/p>\n
It was the grief of discovering that there had been conversations we never had while we still had time.<\/p>\n
I thought about the years when the children were growing up.<\/p>\n
Walt worked hard.<\/p>\n
He wanted them to have opportunities he had not enjoyed.<\/p>\n
He believed that responsibility was a form of love.<\/p>\n
If Michael needed help with a school project, Walt stayed up late to work on it.<\/p>\n
If Stephanie had a problem, he listened, although he sometimes tried to solve it before she had finished explaining.<\/p>\n
If Danny wanted to learn something, Walt usually showed him how to do it.<\/p>\n
He loved them.<\/p>\n
I had never doubted that.<\/p>\n
But he did not always know how to say what he felt.<\/p>\n
Neither did I.<\/p>\n
We had built a marriage around practical things.<\/p>\n
Bills.<\/p>\n
Meals.<\/p>\n
Appointments.<\/p>\n
Repairs.<\/p>\n
We showed love by doing what needed to be done.<\/p>\n
When the children were upset, I made them food.<\/p>\n
When Walt was tired, I left him alone.<\/p>\n
When something troubled me, I waited until the right moment to bring it up.<\/p>\n
The right moment did not always arrive.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I could see how easily a family could become very good at functioning while remaining poor at talking.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, I took a walk through the house.<\/p>\n
I stopped in the doorway of the bedroom.<\/p>\n
Walt's side of the closet was still partly filled with his clothes.<\/p>\n
I had not known what to do with them.<\/p>\n
Some people told me I should donate everything.<\/p>\n
Others said I should take my time.<\/p>\n
I had chosen to take my time.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that I had been waiting for a feeling that would tell me when I was ready.<\/p>\n
There was no such feeling.<\/p>\n
I opened the closet and looked at his shirts.<\/p>\n
One was blue.<\/p>\n
Another was gray.<\/p>\n
A third had a small tear near the cuff that I had promised to repair but never had.<\/p>\n
I touched the fabric.<\/p>\n
Then I closed the door.<\/p>\n
Not today.<\/p>\n
I was learning that not every problem had to be solved the moment I noticed it.<\/p>\n
That evening, Michael called.<\/p>\n
He wanted to check the list of expenses we had made together.<\/p>\n
We went through the figures over the telephone.<\/p>\n
He asked whether I had received a particular statement.<\/p>\n
I found it in the folder.<\/p>\n
We discussed what needed to be clarified.<\/p>\n
Then, after a pause, he asked how I was feeling.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the window.<\/p>\n
"Better than I was."<\/p>\n
"I'm glad."<\/p>\n
He sounded sincere.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had begun to understand that asking how I felt was not an interruption to the practical conversation.<\/p>\n
It was part of it.<\/p>\n
Before we ended the call, he said something I had not expected.<\/p>\n
"Mom, I don't think I ever asked Dad enough questions."<\/p>\n
I sat still.<\/p>\n
"What do you mean?"<\/p>\n
"I always assumed I understood him. I thought if he wanted to tell me something, he would."<\/p>\n
I felt a familiar ache.<\/p>\n
"Your father wasn't always good at explaining himself."<\/p>\n
Michael gave a short laugh.<\/p>\n
"Neither am I."<\/p>\n
"No," I said gently. "You aren't."<\/p>\n
He laughed again.<\/p>\n
This time, I laughed with him.<\/p>\n
It was a small moment.<\/p>\n
But it felt honest.<\/p>\n
After the call, I found myself thinking about Danny.<\/p>\n
He had spent much of his childhood trying to understand his father.<\/p>\n
He had followed Walt around the house, asking questions.<\/p>\n
Sometimes Walt answered patiently.<\/p>\n
Sometimes he told Danny to stop asking and pay attention.<\/p>\n
I wondered how many times Danny had mistaken that impatience for disappointment.<\/p>\n
I wondered how many times I had done the same thing.<\/p>\n
I could not ask Walt now.<\/p>\n
I could only listen to the people who were still here.<\/p>\n
The next day, Danny visited with Kayla and the boys.<\/p>\n
Ethan wanted to show me a drawing he had made.<\/p>\n
It was a picture of a house with a large tree beside it.<\/p>\n
Four people stood in front.<\/p>\n
He had drawn himself taller than Noah.<\/p>\n
I complimented the picture.<\/p>\n
Then he pointed to the tallest person.<\/p>\n
"That's Daddy."<\/p>\n
He pointed to the woman beside him.<\/p>\n
"That's Mommy."<\/p>\n
Then he showed me two smaller figures.<\/p>\n
"That's me and Noah."<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
"Where am I?"<\/p>\n
He thought about it.<\/p>\n
Then he drew a little figure beside the house.<\/p>\n
"You're here, Grandma."<\/p>\n
I felt my throat tighten.<\/p>\n
"Thank you, sweetheart."<\/p>\n
He handed me the drawing.<\/p>\n
I placed it on the refrigerator with a magnet.<\/p>\n
Later, while the boys were playing, Danny and I sat at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
I asked whether he had been thinking about his father.<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"More than usual."<\/p>\n
"Do you miss him?"<\/p>\n
Danny looked at me as though the question was almost too simple.<\/p>\n
"Every day."<\/p>\n
I reached for his hand.<\/p>\n
"Me too."<\/p>\n
He stared at the folder he had brought with him.<\/p>\n
The letters were inside.<\/p>\n
He had not opened his again.<\/p>\n
I asked whether he thought he ever would.<\/p>\n
"Probably."<\/p>\n
"What's stopping you?"<\/p>\n
He considered the question.<\/p>\n
"I think I'm afraid that I'll read something and wish I'd asked him about it while he was alive."<\/p>\n
I understood.<\/p>\n
I had been living with that same fear.<\/p>\n
There were questions I would never get to ask Walt.<\/p>\n
Why had he kept certain worries to himself?<\/p>\n
Why had he believed the letters needed to be read after his death?<\/p>\n
Why had he not told me more about what he was thinking?<\/p>\n
I could imagine possible answers.<\/p>\n
But imagination was not the same as knowing.<\/p>\n
I squeezed Danny's hand.<\/p>\n
"You may wish you had asked him things. I do, too."<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
"But we can't go back."<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
I took a breath.<\/p>\n
"We can only decide what we do with what we have now."<\/p>\n
Danny nodded.<\/p>\n
For a moment, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then he told me that Ethan had been asking about his grandfather.<\/p>\n
He wanted to know why Grandpa wasn't coming over anymore.<\/p>\n
Danny had explained that Grandpa had died.<\/p>\n
Ethan had asked whether that meant he could never see him again.<\/p>\n
Danny had not known what to say.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the refrigerator.<\/p>\n
The child's drawing was held in place by a small red magnet.<\/p>\n
I wondered what I would tell my grandchildren about their grandfather when they were old enough to ask more difficult questions.<\/p>\n
I wanted them to remember his kindness.<\/p>\n
His patience.<\/p>\n
The way he taught them to fix small things.<\/p>\n
I also wanted them to know that grown people could make mistakes, keep secrets, and fail to say what mattered.<\/p>\n
They could love someone deeply and still leave things unfinished.<\/p>\n
That was not a reason to stop loving them.<\/p>\n
It was a reason to speak while we could.<\/p>\n
When Danny left, I took Ethan's drawing down from the refrigerator and looked at it more carefully.<\/p>\n
The house had a crooked roof.<\/p>\n
The tree had branches that reached across the page.<\/p>\n
The little figure he had drawn for me stood beside the front door.<\/p>\n
I put the drawing back.<\/p>\n
Then I went to the desk and opened my notebook.<\/p>\n
I wrote down something I wanted to remember.<\/p>\n
Ask the question while the person is still here to answer it.<\/p>\n
I read the sentence twice.<\/p>\n
Then I closed the notebook.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I understood that Walt's letters were not only about the children.<\/p>\n
They had forced me to look at the way I had lived beside him.<\/p>\n
I had loved him.<\/p>\n
I still did.<\/p>\n
But I had sometimes allowed my love to become an excuse for not asking difficult questions.<\/p>\n
I did not want to make that mistake with my children.<\/p>\n
Not again.<\/p>\n
After the family dinner, I began thinking about Walt differently. Not because I loved him less. Because I had finally allowed myself to admit that love did not make a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40684,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40664\/revisions\/40684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}