Ordinary Coffee

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I wrote this a few months ago, back when we were all still going to work. I miss my morning coffee downstairs with Ed who takes good care of the seniors at our community center and me.

At the office, I go downstairs for coffee. There's always a pot on. Folks there prepping for seniors who come to breakfast and stay for lunch. They invite me for a daily cup. I pour and wish them a good day. They wish me a great one.

It’s ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water runs through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness.

Dad kept coffee on all day. A pot in the morning. One after dinner. When anyone came to visit. When the guys were over to work a funeral. When he went out late to a house, hospital, or nursing home to retrieve the dead and help the living find their way again.

Just ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water run through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness, some darkness.

Dad always offered a cup. Always accepted one. He’d sit, drink coffee, talk, and listen. In his kitchen. In theirs.

At the office, I always accept the offered coffee poured into my cup over the stain of the day before's coffee. I stand, sip that bitter coffee, talk, and listen.

Dad's unfinished cup has gone cold in the kitchen of memory. Death having called him out one last time.

Ordinary coffee. Maxwell House or Folgers. Scooped from a can into a white paper filter. Hot water run through the machine, extracting some flavor, some bitterness, some darkness, some light.

I carry that coffee up to my office and sit alone sipping again from a cup daily refilled.