Welcome to my blog. This is my entry to the Cinnamon Cup Coffee International Coffee Day 2022 contest. Thank you to the community admins for the inspiration.
I give you this essay without preamble, but will share some additional thoughts at the end.
Source: StockSnap on Pixabay
Beginnings and Endings: An Ode to Love, Loss and Coffee
The magic of life is not lost on us in moments large and small. I had this thought as I held my mother’s hand in the bed where she lay, breathing the slow and shallow breath of the dying. My mind reflected back through all of our trials. The angry moments in my teen years, and the times we laughed so hard that we could not speak — our hearts full, our eyes overflowing with tears of laughter — letting go of arguments that were so stupid, but that brought us back together again, gingerly, tenderly, never wanting rifts to be deep or lasting.
In the hardest parting, there is no room for regrets — only celebration of what has been.
My mother had not spoken in three days. Had not opened her eyes. My father floated about like a ghost thing, untethered. My siblings each took their moments to breathe, to leave, to return. One had errands to attend to. Another had to go walk her dogs. One maniacally cleaned house, finding her therapy in the hum of a vacuum and the clearing of dishes and crumbs. Yet another took his leave to stand on the deck that looked out to our snow-covered mountain and let his tears fall. I can only imagine that the enormity of that giant snowy presence, so steady and unmoving, gave him a precious bit of peace and comfort.
Many times, in those last days of my mother’s life, we came together, all of us collecting in a circle like scouts around a campfire, singing the old songs. Michael Row Your Boat Ashore... I’ve Been Working on the Railroad... Kumbaya.
Truly, there is no way to prepare to say goodbye. We have always known this. Once my four siblings and I were grown, our family gatherings would pull us back into our fold, into the little patchwork that is us, that no one else in the world can know, but that is so intimate and lovely and bittersweet. Saying goodbye at the end of these gatherings was never easy. Mother cried every time, as her gaggle of children — grown and independent and away from her too often — packed up and took their leave. Even those goodbyes always felt harsh and sudden. Wait. Wait. It’s too soon. Why must we part? But of course there were things to tend to. Jobs. Homes. Our own grown-up responsibilities.
And now... Now we had to prepare for the biggest goodbye. The permanent one. Impossible.
“How will we know it’s her time?” we had asked the hospice nurse.
“You will know,” she said. “Her color will change. You will see the signs.”
So we watched for them. We held her hand. We sang our songs — Prodigal Son... Dona Nobis Pacem — harmonizing together, as we had always done. As we believed we always would. The days seemed eons long. My father cried. Quietly, he begged her to let go. Not wanting her to let go. Not wanting her to exist in this terrible limbo world between life and death.
And then that morning, after three days of deep sleep, she woke up. It was as if she had needed a deep rest to prepare for what was to come. She opened her eyes and looked at us, gathered all around. Her darlings.
It was Mother’s Day, then. A bright morning. Elsewhere, children were bringing their mothers breakfast in bed, with bouquets of dandelions and spilled cups of too-strong coffee. Other families were trooping off to pancake houses, willing to wait in the long lines to give mom a morning off of her duties. Not us. We stood around my mother’s bedside, singing low and sweet. Talking to her. Telling her we were all there, together. And we would stay, just as she had always wanted.
Elsewhere in the house, my husband rocked our newborn baby, hushing her, telling her that there would be many more Mother’s Days to come. For our own little family was brand new.
In the kitchen, someone had brewed fresh coffee and the aroma infused the air. My mother had always loved her coffee. When I think of that house — my childhood home — so many memories swirl around me, from the canning of preserves in the summer, to climbing the old cherry tree to pick sweet cherries for pie... riding the little red wagon and playing Mother May I in the yard. But it is the aroma of coffee that takes me back there the most, with my parents’ Mr. Coffee machine making its happy sounds, and the aroma of Folgers wafting about, drawing us in, pulling us together.
“Who’d like coffee? You? Here you go.” Oh, those little chipped white cups. How I miss them.
And now, on this portentous Mother’s Day, we gathered round. Who had thought of coffee when the matron of our family home was preparing to slip away from us? Someone took one of the sponges — a tiny sponge on a stick — that we had used to give her water and broth before her three days of deep sleep, and now dipped it into a cup of fresh black coffee, and brought it to her lips. Just a little taste of the dark, pungent drink she had loved. One small Mother’s Day gift.
She could not speak. Could not say what was on her mind. But we all saw the deepest and most abiding love in her eyes — her own parting gift — as her color began to change. The words “I love you” were not in her lexicon. She had never uttered them aloud, yet they were always said, through meals cooked and set on the table, through small favors, intimate gifts and tearful goodbyes.
We saw it now, in her extremities, and the color draining from her cheeks. She was leaving us. With no notion of how to let her go, we gave up talking because there were no words, and sang again, with pure hearts, saying what needed to be said through song. The music of our voices filled the room, and cradled her, and at last lifted her spirit away into the next world. Kumbaya, my Lord.
Kumbaya.
Thank you for reading. I will tell you that I sat down to write this as a work of fiction, but then the truth came out, just as I remember it. The Cinnamon Cup Coffee International Coffee Day 2022 contest invites us to "give us your best coffee-related post to honour your love for coffee. Your post could be your best memory of a coffee moment at home or a coffee shop...."
This took me tumbling back through time to my mother's last Mother's Day, which was also my first as a new mom. My infant daughter, who remained so sweetly quiet as we gave my mother her last sip of coffee, said our goodbyes, and sang her into the next life, is now 24 years old.
Isn't it so strange and intriguing how aromas and sensory experiences live deep in our memories and keep our past alive? It is one of the things that has always inspired me to write.
I called this essay an "ode" because I think of it as a celebration of the richness and complexity that is the human experience, in all of its wonder, loss, and sorrow. Even the hardest moments offer the chance to see things in a new light, and find beauty in absolutely everything.
Thanks again for reading.
Photo credits: All of the photos in this post were taken by me with my iphone and belong to me, unless otherwise noted.
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