Still Decorated

Everyone on Maple Street knew Mrs. Kowalski kept her Christmas lights up too long.

February, March—the plastic icicles still dripping from her gutters, the inflatable snowman deflated but present on the lawn, the wreath on the door fading from forest green to something closer to olive. The HOA had sent letters. The neighbors had opinions. But every year, the lights stayed.

I’d lived three houses down for six years and never asked. You don’t ask old women personal questions in my family. You bring them cookies at Christmas and casseroles when someone dies, and you wave from your car and assume they have their reasons.

But this year was different. This year I was the one with too much time and too many questions, sitting on my porch at 4 PM on December 30th because the alternative was sitting inside with my thoughts. And there she was, Dorothy Kowalski, eighty-three years old, standing on her front step and looking at her lights like she was seeing them for the first time.

“Mrs. Kowalski?” I called before I could stop myself. “You okay?”

She turned slowly—everything she did was slow now, deliberate, like she was rationing her movements. “Rachel. You’re not at work.”

“I’m… taking some time.” Understatement of the year. “Can I help you with something?”

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked back at the lights.

“You want to know why I leave them up,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

I felt my face warm. “I didn’t—”

“Everyone wants to know. They just don’t ask. You’re the first one who’s come close.” She gestured at the step beside her. “Sit.”

So I sat. The concrete was cold through my jeans, but she didn’t seem to notice the chill, and I wasn’t going to complain.

“Walter put these lights up,” she said, pointing at the string of multicolored bulbs along the roofline. “November 28th, 2019. Complained the whole time. ‘Dorothy, I’m too old for ladders. Dorothy, the young people have those laser things now.’ But he did it anyway, because I asked.”

I did the math. “That was—”

“Five years ago. He had his stroke December 3rd. Gone by the 10th.” She said it matter-of-factly, the way you describe something that happened so long ago it’s become geography instead of weather. “I never took the lights down.”

“Oh,” I said, inadequately.

“People think it’s about grief. It’s not.” She turned to look at me directly, and her eyes were sharper than I expected. “Or not just about grief. You understand?”

I didn’t, but I wanted to.

“When Walter was alive, taking down the lights meant it was over. Christmas, the holidays, all of it. Time to pack everything away and wait for the next year.” She paused. “But the next year isn’t guaranteed, is it? I learned that. So now—”

She reached out and touched one of the bulbs, cold and dark in the afternoon light.

“Now the lights stay up because I like them. Because they make me smile when I pull into the driveway. Because every time I see them, I remember Walter on that ladder, telling me I was impossible, and I say ‘Thank you, Walter’ out loud to nobody.” She smiled, and it transformed her whole face. “The HOA thinks I’m senile. Let them.”

We sat in silence for a moment. A car drove past. Someone was burning leaves somewhere, that autumn smell lingering into winter.

“Why are you taking time off work, Rachel?”

The question caught me off guard. “I… my mother passed. September.”

“Ah.” Just that. Just acknowledgment.

“I keep thinking I should be over it by now. It’s been months. Everyone else seems to have moved on. My sister’s already cleared out the house, and I—” I stopped. I hadn’t meant to say any of this.

“You haven’t cleared out something,” Dorothy said. “What is it?”

“Her voicemails. She used to leave me these rambling messages about nothing. What she had for lunch. A bird she saw. Complaints about her neighbor’s dog. I have eleven of them saved and I can’t—” My voice cracked. “I can’t delete them, but I also can’t listen to them. So they just sit there.”

Dorothy nodded slowly. “Your lights.”

“What?”

“Those voicemails. They’re your lights.” She patted my knee with a papery hand. “Everyone has something they keep past when they’re supposed to. Something that doesn’t make sense to anybody else. Doesn’t have to make sense. It’s yours.”

I thought about that. About the voicemails taking up space in my phone that I’d fiercely protected through two device upgrades. About the way I checked sometimes just to make sure they were still there, without ever pressing play.

“Don’t let anyone tell you when it’s time to take them down,” Dorothy said. “You’ll know. Or you won’t, and that’s fine too. Walter’s been gone five years and these lights aren’t going anywhere. They’ll outlast me, probably. And then whoever moves in next can deal with them.”

She laughed—actually laughed—and I found myself laughing too.

“Come inside,” she said, pushing herself up carefully. “I have cookies that need eating and no grandchildren coming until New Year’s. And I want to hear about these voicemails. What kind of bird did she see?”

I followed her into the house, past the wreath that was definitely more brown than green now, past the deflated snowman I no longer found sad.

The lights stayed dark in the December afternoon. In a few hours, they’d turn on automatically—the timer Walter had installed, still working after five years—and Maple Street would have its familiar glow.

I’d driven past it a thousand times without stopping.

I was glad I finally did.