The Taste of Absence | Bethany Bruno
My father drank black Maxwell House from a repurposed Big Gulp cup, the kind with a faded NASCAR logo and a plastic straw he never used. Every morning, long before the world stirred, he filled it to the brim and cradled it between his knees as he drove to work. No cream. No sugar. Just heat, grit, and something close to devotion.
He called it fuel, though he never rushed through it. He sipped slowly at red lights, windows cracked even in July, letting the scent of burnt coffee mix with wet palm air and the steady hum of morning sprinklers. The South Florida sun always rose early, golden and mean, but he met it with caffeine and stubbornness.
On weekends, he used the “Grumpy” mug I bought him when I was twelve. We were at Disney World, sweating through a heat advisory, and I picked it out with the kind of glee only a child feels while gift shopping. Grumpy had always been his nickname. He was famously irritable before his first sip of coffee, muttering through breakfast like the day had personally offended him.
The mug was heavy, white ceramic, with Grumpy’s furrowed brow and crossed arms printed on the side. I wrapped it in tissue paper and held it behind my back like I had smuggled treasure. He drank from it for years, even after the handle chipped and the cartoon face faded to a ghost of itself.
He died in 2016. Six months from diagnosis to gone. Cancer took his voice first, then his appetite, then the rest. His work boots stayed by the door. His Big Gulp cup stayed on the counter. Some mornings, he still made coffee, but by the end, it was mostly untouched, the steam rising while he slept through the daylight. The bitterness outlasted him.
Since then, I have tried every method of coffee making. French press. Pour-over. Chic glass carafes with wooden collars. None of them feels right. They are too clean, too careful. They don’t know what it means to keep going. The smell of Maxwell House from a plastic tub still carries more weight than any hand-picked Ethiopian blend ever could.
Each morning, I make coffee. I press the button and wait. I listen for the sputter, watch the steam curl into the quiet. I pour a cup and drink it black.
It is not good coffee.
But grief has a way of anchoring itself in the ordinary. It clings to routines, disguises itself as habit. Sometimes I open the cabinet just to look at the Grumpy mug, still tucked behind the others, its handle glued back together with a crooked seam. I never use it. I am afraid the crack will not hold. I am more afraid it will.
Love, when it lingers, finds its voice in the bitterness. It slips into the places we thought we had cleared out. I drink, and he is there.
Still warm. Still rising.
About the Author:
Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author and amateur historian. Born in Hollywood and raised in Port St. Lucie, she holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her writing has appeared in more than seventy literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, The Huffington Post, The MacGuffin, McSweeney’s, and 3Elements Review. More at bethanybrunowriter.com.