I’m sitting at my friends’ kitchen table with coffee watching the foggy morning moistly move forward. I think she’s oversleeping but I’m not sure what to do about it. I made noise, made coffee and I wait for sounds of her in the house. It’s not that different with her husband not here. It’s been a month since he died. So crazy how in a minute he’s gone.
She’s got photos of him everywhere. I like it. I still hear his voice in the morning of our mornings together. “Eggs!” he’d scream coming down the stairs and then he’d yell, “Coffee!” Not demanding them but joyfully exclaiming to the world that he was going to make them. I often wondered if they’d had mad sex before to make him so vibrant, exuberant and hungry. I never asked, just laughed and received the kiss on the crown of my head as he’d walk by to start his process, the smell of lavender wafting over me from the oils he was sure were curing his every ailment. He’d start breaking eggs, slamming plates and pots, exclaiming over it all, creating a breakfast festival.
Now the house is quiet, his wife escaped me for her meeting, not sleeping in for grief. But slipping past me as I wrote, an inability to rally the same enthusiasm for coffee and eggs. Perhaps she never had it. Perhaps she indulged his boisterous mornings. But I sit here as always, a guest at their table and I hear his cacophony in my memories. I feel the exuberance of a life well lived in the walls and in the way the grey spring day wafts over the magnolias in the far neighbor’s lawn. The table is as it’s always been. The miniature tiger, dog, cat and full sized dragonfly under glass, the fruit bowl full next to the withering orchid, the rosemary next to the artisanal gin we sipped over stories the night before. I listen to the clock ticking sipping coffee from my antique cup that reminds me of old diners and I vow to treat the day with a boisterous reverence as I continue to live a ilfe well lived with my friend in the air around me. I let him inspire me as always: to head into each day with a cacophony that exclaims life as the gift and the burden we are privileged to carry. And I wait for my eggs.