Cold, Bitter Coffee
I have an odd feeling these days about dying, but I don’t think it feels like dying is supposed to feel. I have this odd feeling that dying will be more like popping from this life to the next staccato style. One day I'll be in the park riding a bike or at the stove frying okra, and then suddenly--POP--I'll be somewhere else.
Not too many people share that view, but it doesn’t seem like anybody really knows. I like the way the Scriptures speak of death. From the earliest stories in Genesis to those wordy epistles by Paul, writers use all sorts of metaphors to avoid saying dead or die. I like that. I don’t like the word dead either. Water spilt on the ground. Putting off this earthly tent. Departing. The mortal clothed with immortality. There’s one from Genesis that I really like concerning Jacob: When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people. Maybe someone can say something at my funeral. He finished telling another one of his stories, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.
In connection with my feelings about death, I have developed an odd practice. I drink cold, bitter coffee. It started one afternoon after school. The day had been long but fairly uneventful, which is to say that each class had been staccato, a popping from boring to intriguing, from planned learning to impromptu stories. Each class got a different Mr. Henry than the one before because I can’t focus long enough to be funny or fussy or academic all the time. All that popping was over and I was tired. I walked to my Tundra, opened the door, slung my backpack across the driver’s seat, and then used the steering wheel to hoist myself in. Arriving in my seat, I noticed my coffee cup with a portion of undrank coffee, cold as a mackerel from my morning drive.
As a Billy Collins poem might say, "No cookie nibbled by a French novelist/could send one into the past more suddenly--." Cups with unfinished coffee greet me most afternoons, but they don’t send me into the past. Generally, I toss the remains onto the pavement. But that afternoon was different. This time, the cold cup of coffee awoke within me memoires of my papaw and mamaw. He went first, the victim of a vicious heart attack, drifting off to sleep one evening and, as she slept, was gathered to his people. Mamaw went to bed married and woke up a widow. She was a quiet woman, stingy with her staccato sentences. Ten years later, she joined him. They left me two headstones in a Sequatchie County churchyard and a few snapshot memories to occasionally sort through.
I started drinking coffee in college. It was during those years that I'd sometimes go to my mamaw's house to cut her grass. For a few years after his death, she’d cut it herself. However, her sons didn’t like that and eventually took away her mower, replacing it with their sons. My rotation came up about 5 times a summer.
“Don’t let her pay you,” my dad would say.
“I won’t,” I’d reply with a sigh as I’d load our lawnmower into the back of my VW Bug.
Mamaw never offered to pay us, but she did feed us. When rotation would come up, mamaw would call. No cell phones back then; she’d call on the normal line.
“Hello,” I’d say.
“My grass needs a-cutting.”
“Ok. I can come on Tuesday after class.”
Dial tone.
She never said Hello or Good-bye or anything beyond using the most basic words for communication. I’d drive over on Tuesday and, as I approached the house, I’d see her on the porch. When she’d see me, she would turn and go back into the house. I’d get the lawn mower out, mow grass, sweep the sidewalk and driveway, load the mower, and then go up to the house to tell her good-bye. She’d sometimes come to the door but not usually. Usually, she’d just call out, “I’ve got you something to eat.”
It was always the same meal. It didn’t matter what time I arrived--morning, noon, or night--I sat down to chicken fried steak, sawmill gravy, lumpy mashed potatoes, garden fresh green beans that’d been canned from some summer before, and homemade biscuits. Sometimes, she’d offer canned jelly for the biscuits; sometimes only butter.
“What flavor is this?” I asked once.
“It’s just jelly,” she replied.
Mamaw never ate with me, a tradition that she and papaw had kept between themselves for all their married life. He ate first--alone--and she ate afterwards, free to eat all of the leftovers she wanted. If my sister and I visited without our parents, papaw ate first, sitting at a long dining room table alone. Afterwards, she ate with my sister and I in the kitchen, free to eat all the leftovers we wanted. Often, she’d turn the mashed potatoes into some sort of fried pancake. She’d do the same with creamed corn. There was no recipe, just a little of this and a little of that. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever had anything better.
As her boys married, the daughter-in-laws resisted this men-eat-first tradition. Before I was even born (I was the 5th cousin), they complained enough to their husbands to get the custom changed. Mamaw was hurt that her sons would turn on their father in favor of their young wives, and papaw was just mad, I was told. But that all happened before I was born. My memories are papaw at the head of the table, being served first, and the sons and wives alternated around the sides, being served next, and an empty space at the end. Mamaw busied herself in the kitchen as the meal started, everyone getting their food and starting to chatter. Her place setting would remain untouched as she’d quietly wander out to the back porch where we kids had been assigned. She’d pull up a stool, her food the remainder of what had been in the cooking bowls and pots, all scrunched tightly on a cracked salad plate, and she’d eat with us kids. For a long time I thought that she just liked grandchildren and enjoyed eating with us. As it turned out, we annoyed her greatly, but I figured it would have annoyed her more to sit with those daughters-in-law.
After the grass was mowed, I ate as she watched, silently sitting there. I speak as I’d cut my steak covered in gravy, and then listen to my own chewing as she sat. From the steak to the potatoes to the greens and biscuit, I’d shovel it in, trying to talk between bites, but mostly I just ate and she just watched. It was awkward. Her steak sat in the iron skillet on the stove, her potatoes and beans were within my reach on the table, her biscuit on a napkin in front of her, melting a hunk of butter.
“Why don’t you eat with me, Mamaw?” I’d offer.
“I’ll eat directly,” she’d say.
The conversations were few, but there was once….
Once she asked me if I wanted some coffee. I said yes. She walked over to the stove and poured me a cup. I sipped it. It was stone cold and bitter. I choked down about a tablespoon’s worth. I asked her if she always drank her coffee cold.
“Never,” she said. “That was your papaw’s ways.”
“Oh?”
“I’d fix a pot of the morning and he’d drink some burning hot. Then he come home at lunch and drink it still just a little warm. Of the evening, he’d finish it.”
I didn’t know what to say, and she spoke again.
“One pot ever day. I never fixed two.”
I sipped again; it was just as bitter.
“Ever day.” Her voice was almost a whisper and eyes were fixed, looking out the window.
Suddenly, I was popped from the past back into my truck. I looked again at the cup that sat between me and the memory. I reached for it and looked down inside of it. It was black as history. I sipped. It was cold and bitter, just as bitter as that July morning some 45 years ago. Some tears found their way into the cup.
I might see my mamaw and papaw “sooner than later,” as my mom used to say. His rough face might still be too much for a young boy's cheek and she might be eating dinner on some porch with grandchildren. I hope heaven hasn’t changed them, giving them some sort of articulation that spoils the people they were. It would be a shame to hear them rattle off like my other grandmother, Vera. Mom’s side of the family were talkers; I come mostly from them.
When I sit with papaw and mamaw, I'll have the time and the patience that I didn't have when they were here. We'll sit and, if it takes weeks and weeks, I'll listen and pry and learn about their lives. Our coffee will come out of a steel pot that never goes empty, starting so hot that it'll burn my tongue, and as it cools to a bitter cold, I'll discover the true joy of being gathered to my people.
Maybe you drink coffee. Maybe from time to time you don’t finish your cup and you set it down. Maybe you leave it there and walk off, getting on with the rest of your life. Maybe when you return and find it, you toss it out. Here’s an idea: occasionally, see that cup and let it send you into the past. Pause. Staccato style, think about folks you’ve known who have gone on. Maybe think about your own mamaw and papaw. Sip. Taste the cold bitterness. Spend a moment tasting eternity, and let the smell stay on your breath awhile.
