I visited my Grandpa Rainey—my dad’s father—in the hospital the other day and he asked me if I like coffee. “Yes, the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is to go start the coffee,” I told him. “That’s how I knew she wasn’t going to make it,” he had told me in March when I was home for my Grandma Rainey’s funeral. “She stopped drinking coffee.” If there is any metaphor for life that both sides of my family shared, it is coffee. As long as we are drinking coffee, we are alive. We have a reason to get up in the morning, to brew a pot, to hear the coffee moan and travail until the dripping stops and the coffee pots rests, her work done for another day. We pour a cup, put in our cream and sugar, grab a Bible or newspaper, and come alive for a new day. We start the day this way during the deep chill of a winter morning or on dewy spring days just after dawn. When we drink coffee, we are alive. When I was growing up, I was not as close to my dad’s family because my parents divor...
by Chris Rainey. This is a blog of my journaling, essays, opinion pieces, religious satire, and creative writing.