Coffee & God

When I was little, I knew things. For one, I knew how to make coffee. I visited my grandparents sometimes, and they drank coffee. A lot of coffee. So they taught me to make it. I stayed at their Florida ranch one weekend while my parents were on a trip. At four years old, I was already an expert coffee-maker. On Saturday morning, I shuffled into the kitchen, sliding my bare toes over the warm floor tiles as I worked my eyes awake. Grandma and Grandpa were already up, and I decided to make a pot.

"Grandpa, I'm going to make coffee," I tell him. "Oh, yeah?" he growls at me teasingly. Suddenly, the floor falls away from me as his soft, dry hands grab me under my armpits, and he swings me through the air onto the kitchen counter, right next to the coffee maker. I squeal, delighted to be up high with the grown-ups. I can see things from here, like the sink. Happily kicking my feet back and forth, I turn my attention to my grandmother as she brings the coffee can over to us.

"You know," she says, "if you drink too much coffee, you're going to be bald like Grandpa!" My brows come together and my lips tighten as I frown at her mistake. Grandpa isn't bald.

"He has hair, Grandma. Way down there!" I explain in his defense as I point to the place where the back of his head joins his neck. How could she forget? The silvery patch of hair pops out against his dark, Italian skin. "Oh my goodness, you're right!" She corrects herself. Good. She hands me a package of coffee filters and I focus my attention of peeling one off the top. Once I put the filter in the pot, Grandpa hands me the opened can of coffee and the measuring spoon. "Now, put three big scoops in the pot."

“I know how to do it,” I tell him. “I’ve done this before, you know.” Then, I carefully, expertly add one, two, three heaping tablespoons of ground coffee into the filter. He nods in approval, “Good job, Baby Doll.” Grandma adds the water, and I press “start.”

***

My grandpa taught me lots of other things besides how to make coffee, like how to roll dough for pizzelles (pit-SEALS) just the right size, how to fold and fry fritos (FREE-toe-AHS) without breaking them, and how to sneak limitless amounts of chocolate covered cherries from the candy dish without getting caught. Every year at Christmas, we utterly demolished the household supply of chocolate covered cherries. He'd nudge me whenever my grandma wasn't looking and say, "Megs, wouldja get me one of those?" gesturing towards the dish of candy. (If she caught us, he'd be subject to an accusatory, "Whaddya doing, Frankie?") I'd roll my eyes, wait for an opportune moment, and pluck two of the red-foil-wrapped-chocolate-covered domes off the plate, handing him one and keeping the other for myself. He'd grumble in mock annoyance that I didn't give him both. We'd repeat the ritual an hour or so later. And so it had been for every Christmas that I can remember.

Two years ago, there was an unexpected addition to our ritual. I handed my grandpa the cherry, as I'd done countless times before, but this time he simply held it for a while. Not long before Christmas, he was diagnosed with congenital heart failure. He'd been a smoker for most of his life; as a result his heart was now operating at only a fraction of what it should, and his lungs were worse. He had a pace maker and defibrillator placed on his heart, and a tank of oxygen followed his every move, lurking conspicuously in corners and under tables. His fingers were made clumsy, trying and failing to achieve the level of dexterity they had come to expect of themselves. "Undo the wrapper for me, wouldja Kid?" he asked, just barely failing to conceal his frustration. "Sure." I said as I unwrapped the candy and handed back it to him.

***

Last year was my first Christmas without my grandpa. The idea of navigating an airport with several barrels of oxygen in tow was less than ideal; the thought of riding in a car for fifteen hours on end was inconceivable. So, long story short, my grandparents stayed home that Christmas. I don't remember eating any cherries.

***

In January, my mom, my sister, and I went to Florida to visit them, since we hadn't seen them recently. We arrived at their house late Thursday night. My grandpa wasn't there; he'd been staying at the hospital. We would visit him in the morning.

Morning came around 2 A.M., when a doctor called and told us to come now. With a sort of anxious lack of emotion, I got dressed and climbed into the backseat of my grandma's car next to my sister, walked into the hospital, and rode the elevator up to the ICU. The waiting room had fluorescent lighting, a drinking fountain next to a bathroom, a few plants, and blue chairs. We waited there for maybe five minutes, but I can't be sure. It felt shorter and longer at the same time. When the nurse finally came out, we all knew instinctively that he was gone. She explained that his heart had stopped three times during the night. They were able to revive him twice. I think by the third time, he'd decided it was time to let go.

The nurse took us to his room. My mom and grandma went in to see him and to say goodbye. My sister and I stayed outside the door. Part of me was afraid to this person I'd known my entire life as loud, teasing, and utterly fiery as a lifeless body. The other part of me felt that if I entered the room with my mom and her mother, I'd be intruding on a moment I wasn't meant to be a part of. They were a family before I even existed as a thought; that family was broken, and the remaining pieces needed to be alone with each other in order to process what they had lost. I leaned against the wall with my arms wrapped around myself, staring at the floor and not moving to stop the hot tears streaming down my face. I heard my grandma sobbing through the closed door. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

The next thing I remember is being back in the waiting room, sitting in one of the blue chairs while my mom made some phone calls and my grandma waited to talk to the doctor. When he came out to see us, the doctor brought some of my grandpa's things--clothes and such. My grandma immediately asked for his metal.

He had four items of jewelry that I am aware of: a crucifix, a medallion of Mother Mary, a ring with Jesus's face, and his wedding band. Each one, he wore every day; each one was gold. My grandma put the medallion around her neck and grasped the wedding band in a tight fist. They had been married for forty-nine years and nine months. My grandma spent a few minutes talking to the doctor. Not long after that, we went back to the house, but none of us got any sleep.

***

When somebody dies, everybody pretty much knows that there's nothing they can do to make it better. So they bring food. We spent two days in a blur of countless people I barely knew parading in and out of the house with food, apologies, and inquiries about how we're "holding up." In the breaks between visitors, there was a whole lot of sitting around and staring at each other. One night, I think it was Saturday, we sat around the table looking through old pictures and laughing--about my mom in the eighties, my sister naked in the tub, me wearing a yellow pot over my head, my aunt’s wedding. At night, you could hear my grandma crying from her room and her too-empty bed. “My baby, my baby’s gone.”

The funeral was on Tuesday. My dad had to pack clothes for us and bring them with him when he came, since we hadn't planned for anything formal. The rest of my family had shown up by then, too: my brother and sister, cousins, aunt and uncle, grandmother on my dad's side, aunt on my dad's side, mom's cousin we hadn't seen in some-eighteen years. People who knew my grandpa sent emails and Facebook messages to my mom: "I remember when your dad let me drive his brand new station wagon. I was only seventeen--he was nuts." It's a weird thing when you realize someone exists beyond what they were in relation to you. Frank Parenti was a husband, a father, and a friend long before he was my grandpa. I wish I would have realized that sooner; I wish I could've known those people, too.

I wore a turquoise dress with tan heels and a gold necklace to church for the funeral service. I don't think anybody who knew my grandpa wore black. Certainly no one wore a tie. My grandpa hated ties. He only owned one, and kept it in the glove compartment of his car in case he needed it. (Apparently at the time my grandparents were dating, they wouldn't let you into clubs without a tie.) I hugged a lot of people I didn't know, and it sucked. My little brother started crying before we went into church; I hugged him too, but that didn't suck as much. I sat in the second pew on the left, behind my mom, aunt, and grandma. The priest talked about a Frank who was fiercely loving, but who was also a lot of other things I didn't know about. I cried a lot.

The priest also talked about God. He told us that my grandpa isn't in pain anymore, that he's in heaven, that God is with him. He told us that we'll see him again someday. These are things I was raised my entire life to believe. I wanted—I want with all of my heart for those things to be true. But I don't know about God, and I don't know about Heaven. I guess at some point these things just stopped making sense. My rational mind says there's no such thing as eternal life, that there's no consciousness beyond the one your body gives you. By extension, then, there's no such thing as God, and our loved ones who die are really just dead.

But that's not what my grandfather believed. My he believed deeply that if you live a life full of love, your soul would go to heaven, and he truly lived his life by this rule. I wish I could ask him how he knew. I wish I could know that man who was so sure of his place in the universe that he put his faith in God over everything else, even when he afraid—even when he wasn’t ready to die. Maybe he believed that we as humans aren't meant to, aren't capable of, understanding the larger thing that we're a part of; and maybe he was okay with that. Maybe there's a Heaven out there that we're too small and basic to even begin to fathom, let alone comprehend. Who am I to think that something can only exist if I can wrap my mind around it? Only recently did I begin to understand that a man I'd known my whole life was so much more than I'd ever known him to be.

***

My grandfather was a photographer and a scientist. He loved board games and Frank Sinatra and he absolutely hated ties. He yelled a lot, but in a good, Italian way. He loved the people around him, and he loved God. One time he let my mom's seventeen-year-old friend drive his brand new station wagon. He taught me things important things, like how to make coffee.

So now, the smell of coffee will always remind me of Florida mornings--of warm floors and still-sleepy eyes. The other day, I made myself a pot. I put a filter in the top and expertly--but carefully--placed one, two, three heaping tablespoons of ground coffee into the filter. I added some water and pressed start, and I think that heaven must be real.

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