Three Taps at Seven

My husband Wilbur had a stroke in March and lost his words.

Fifty-one years of talking, gone in one afternoon.

The doctors said, “He understands you, but he can’t answer.”

So I filled the quiet myself.

I read him the newspaper every morning. I told him what I was cooking for supper. I complained about the neighbor’s dog, the price of eggs, the weather, and the weeds taking over our flower beds.

I talked enough for both of us.

Sometimes I wondered if I was annoying him.

He couldn’t tell me.

Every evening at seven, Wilbur would reach across the recliner and tap the back of my hand three times.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The first few times, I barely noticed.

The nurse thought it was a tremor.

I scheduled tests, terrified it was seizures.

But the neurologist said there was no evidence of that.

“It could simply be repetitive movement,” she told me.

So I accepted it.

Or at least, I tried to.

Because Wilbur had never been a man who did anything without a reason.

We met in 1971.

I was nineteen. He was twenty-one.

We sat three pews apart at a little church in Indiana, and for the first several Sundays, we never spoke.

Not because we didn’t want to.

Because my father was strict, and Wilbur was too shy to risk making him angry.

So we found another way.

During church, Wilbur would rest his hand on the wooden pew between us.

If he tapped once, it meant, Are you okay?

Twice meant, Look at me.

Three times meant something neither of us ever forgot.

I love you.

It was our secret language.

Fifty-one years later, I thought that language was gone too.

Until one night in September.

I was sitting beside his bed, half asleep.

The television was murmuring in the background.

Wilbur’s breathing was slow and steady.

Then I felt his fingers touch my hand.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

I opened my eyes.

He was looking directly at me.

For some reason, my heart started pounding.

I lifted my hand and tapped his back four times.

The way I used to in 1971 when we couldn’t talk in church.

Four taps.

I love you more.

Wilbur went completely still.

His eyes widened.

And then they filled with tears.

I froze.

“Wilbur?”

His lips trembled.

He tried to speak.

Nothing came out.

Then he squeezed my hand.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I started crying.

“Oh, honey…”

I didn’t know what I was saying anymore.

I only knew that suddenly, after six months of silence, I understood.

Three taps had never been a tremor.

They had been his way of telling me, I love you.

Every evening.

At seven.

Without missing a day.

For months, he had been trying to say the one thing his mouth could no longer say.

I leaned over and kissed his forehead.

“You’ve been telling me that every night, haven’t you?”

Three taps.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

I laughed through my tears.

“You stubborn old man.”

His eyes smiled.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I sat beside him and remembered everything.

Our first date.

Our tiny apartment.

The first Christmas we couldn’t afford a tree, so Wilbur cut a branch from an evergreen behind our building and decorated it with popcorn.

The birth of our daughter.

The terrible arguments.

The years when money was tight.

The years when money wasn’t.

The vacations we almost canceled.

The vacations we took anyway.

The morning he slipped a ring onto my finger.

The night he whispered, “Forever,” and I believed him.

Fifty-one years.

And now he couldn’t say my name.

But somehow, he had found a way to say everything else.

The next morning, I called the speech therapist.

I told her about the tapping.

She listened carefully.

Then she asked, “Have you tried assigning meanings to different numbers of taps?”

“No.”

“Try it.”

So we did.

One tap meant yes.

Two meant no.

Three meant I love you.

Four meant I love you more.

Five meant I’m hungry.

That last one made me laugh so hard I nearly spilled my coffee.

We began building our little language.

It wasn’t perfect.

Sometimes he’d tap too quickly.

Sometimes I’d misunderstand.

Sometimes he’d get frustrated, and I’d say, “Slow down, Wilbur. I’m still your wife. I’ve been translating you for fifty-one years.”

He would roll his eyes.

That was how I knew he was still himself.

Weeks passed.

Then one evening, at exactly seven, he tapped my hand three times.

I tapped four times back.

He smiled.

But that wasn’t the only thing that happened.

He opened his mouth.

I watched his face tighten with concentration.

He tried again.

A rough, broken sound came out.

“Ma…”

I stopped breathing.

Wilbur swallowed.

“Ma…”

I grabbed his hand.

“Mary?”

His eyes filled with tears.

He nodded.

It was my name.

My name.

After six months of silence, my husband had said my name.

It wasn’t clear.

It wasn’t beautiful.

It wasn’t the way he used to say it when we were young.

But it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

I pressed my forehead against his.

“You remembered.”

He tapped my hand three times.

I laughed and cried at the same time.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I remember too.”

His recovery was slow.

Some words returned.

Others didn’t.

There were still days when his thoughts were trapped behind his lips.

But we stopped calling those days silent.

Because they weren’t.

We had three taps.

Four taps.

A squeeze of the hand.

A raised eyebrow.

A smile.

A look across the room.

Fifty-one years had taught us something neither of us understood when we were nineteen.

Love isn’t always spoken.

Sometimes it’s a hand resting on yours.

Sometimes it’s someone reading the newspaper aloud even when you’ve heard the same story three times.

Sometimes it’s a man who can’t say a single word spending every evening at seven trying to tell his wife he loves her.

And sometimes, after a lifetime together, you realize you never needed words as much as you thought you did.

A year after Wilbur’s stroke, we went back to that little church in Indiana.

The same church where we’d first learned to speak without speaking.

We sat in the third pew.

Wilbur reached across the wooden bench.

He tapped my hand three times.

I tapped four times back.

Then he leaned toward me.

His speech was still slow.

Still imperfect.

But he managed to whisper two words.

“I remember.”

I smiled.

“So do I.”

And sitting there beside the man I’d loved for more than half a century, I realized something.

His stroke hadn’t taken our language away.

It had simply reminded us that we’d never needed only one.

Because after fifty-one years, I knew exactly what three little taps meant.

They meant:

I’m still here.

I still know you.

And after everything we’ve been through, I still choose you.

Every day.

At seven o’clock.

For the rest of our lives.