Coffee House Worship

The comforting aroma of coffee brewing

wafts through the air and I’m thrown back to childhood...waking to the scent of your morning ritual. Eagerly, I’d rise to join you, knowing you’d already been up for hours...imbibing caffeine and current events....the kitchen counter your pulpit from which you could only whisper sermons into the silence (of a sleeping house.) I, your most faithful.

A whirring grinder disrupts this memory...yet it too brings peace of mind, as familiar sounds do.  Sipping from a warm cup, I imagine you doing the same, from your hospital bed, having unhooked your IV in the early hours in search of more important sustenance. This rebellious act no different than the many others in your life. 

Not your usual location, but you found a house of worship on the second floor that will do, adorned with the symbolic green mermaid with two tails. It too a rebellion, against a prudish society that worships virgins. You’ve always loved that symbolism, breaking from your Catholic upbringing in puberty... preferring more realistic fairy tales. The Mother having your devotion, while not negating what made her so.

I smile, appreciating your maverick attitude...knowing your nurses are shaking their heads as you demand control over your fate ... like the nuns must have all those years ago. Neither cancer nor church can contain you. 

I smile, while fighting back tears...terrified to open those floodgates. Perhaps...if I sit here long enough...breathing over coffee beans, like rosary beads...my chest won’t feel so tight....perhaps the fear of losing you will be exhaled ... absorbed by my fellow worshipers ....like so many “hail Mary”’s whispered into the silence...

of an empty cup.