December 24 arrived quietly.
There was no special announcement to tell me that the day I had been thinking about for weeks had finally come.
The calendar had said it was coming.
Now it was here.
I went about the morning as I usually did, taking care of the small things that needed doing and trying not to let my thoughts run too far ahead.
It wasn't easy.
The date had become tied to Wendell in my mind.
Every time I remembered the yellow paper, I felt that familiar mixture of hope and uncertainty.
For my Winnie.
Three simple words.
I had wondered what they meant when I first saw them.
I was still wondering.
But I didn't want to spend the whole day standing inside my own imagination, building a version of Christmas Eve that might have nothing to do with the one Wendell had planned.
I wanted to let the day unfold.
That was harder than it sounded.
I had learned to prepare myself for disappointment long before I met Wendell.
After Dwight died, I often tried to keep my expectations small.
If I expected little, I told myself, then I could not be hurt as badly when life failed to give me what I wanted.
It was a reasonable idea.
It was also a lonely way to live.
I didn't want to bring that habit into every new part of my life.
Wendell had given me reasons to hope.
He had been patient with my memories.
He had listened when I talked about things that mattered to me.
He had never treated my grief as a burden I should hurry to put down.
Those things were real.
So were my questions.
I didn't need to deny one truth to make room for the other.
I could look forward to seeing him without deciding that everything between us was already settled.
I could be nervous without assuming something was wrong.
I could hope for a good day without demanding that it answer every question I had ever asked myself.
That was how I wanted to approach Christmas Eve.
I thought about the garage again.
The photographs had been there before I noticed them.
The yellow paper had been fixed to the wall with blue painter's tape.
The date had been written beneath the words.
The buttercup-yellow paint had stood out against the ordinary colors of the garage.
And Wendell had appeared at the top of the ramp with a pencil behind his ear and sawdust on his old blue shirt.
I could still remember how quickly his face changed.
“Oh, honey.”
He had sounded frightened.
Or embarrassed.
Or perhaps he had simply been caught unprepared.
I had tried to understand his expression so many times that I no longer trusted my own guesses.
Only Wendell knew what he had been feeling.
Only Wendell could explain what he had been preparing.
I wanted to give him the chance to do that.
But I also wanted to be honest about what the waiting had done to me.
I had spent too many days wondering whether I was welcome in his life.
I didn't need a perfect answer.
I needed a truthful one.
That distinction mattered.
A perfect answer might have sounded beautiful and still left me uncertain.
A truthful answer might have been difficult to hear, but at least it would give us something real to work with.
I had lived long enough to know that the truth did not always arrive wrapped in comfort.
Sometimes it arrived in ordinary words spoken by someone who was finally ready to stop hiding behind silence.
I hoped Wendell would speak those words.
I also knew I couldn't make him ready.
All I could do was decide what I was willing to offer when the moment came.
I would offer him my attention.
I would listen.
I would ask questions if I needed to.
And I would not pretend to understand something that still confused me.
That last part was important.
I had often smiled through uncertainty because I wanted to keep a peaceful moment from becoming uncomfortable.
But peace built on things left unsaid never lasted very long.
I didn't want that kind of peace anymore.
I wanted the kind that came after two people had been honest with each other.
I wanted to feel that we were standing on the same side of the conversation.
Not one person explaining and the other trying to guess what remained hidden.
Not one person deciding what the other was ready to know.
Just two people trying to understand one another.
Perhaps that was too much to expect from a single evening.
I didn't think it was too much to hope for.
As the day moved forward, I found myself remembering Christmases from earlier years.
Dwight had been part of so many of them.
His presence belonged to my memories whether I wanted to think about him or not.
There were things I would always miss.
I could not change that.
Nor did I want to erase those years simply because my life had changed.
Dwight had been my husband.
That would always be true.
Wendell was a different person, with a different life and a different place in my heart.
I didn't need to compare them.
I didn't need to make one smaller to make room for the other.
I had finally begun to understand that loving again was not a betrayal.
It was simply another part of being alive.
That thought helped me breathe a little easier.
I didn't know what Wendell had planned for the evening.
I didn't know whether the yellow paper would finally make sense to me.
I didn't even know whether I would understand everything immediately if he explained it.
But I was ready to stop guessing.
I wanted to meet him as he was.
I wanted him to meet me as I was, too.
Not as a woman who never worried.
Not as someone who could accept every silence without being affected by it.
Just me.
A woman who had loved her husband, lost him, and found herself willing to love another man.
A woman who was grateful for kindness but still needed honesty.
A woman who had learned that patience could be generous without becoming endless.
When I thought about the words on the yellow paper, I tried to hear them without adding anything to them.
For my Winnie.
They were affectionate words.
They were personal words.
They had been written for a reason I still did not fully understand.
I could let them matter without deciding what they promised.
That was enough for the moment.
I didn't want to turn Christmas Eve into a test Wendell didn't know he was taking.
I wanted to give us both a chance to speak plainly.
If he had something important to share, I would listen.
If I had questions, I would ask them.
And if we discovered that we had misunderstood each other, I hoped we would be willing to admit it.
That was the kind of beginning I wanted.
Not a flawless evening.
An honest one.
By then, I had stopped expecting the day to arrive with all my worries already settled.
The worries were there.
So was my hope.
I could carry both.
And when I thought of the buttercup-yellow paint, I no longer tried to decide what it meant.
I let it remain what I had actually seen: a bright color in a garage, beside a ramp and photographs, beneath three words that had made me wonder.
The explanation belonged to Wendell.
I was ready to hear it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: I Had Waited for Wendell to Explain the Photographs and the Yellow Paper, but I Finally Understood That Listening Would Matter More Than Guessing
I Thought the Hardest Thing About Losing My Husband Was Learning to Sleep Alone Until Another Man Made Me Question Everything
Part 17 of 20
