Man I really love shitty coffee. I am not quite sure why or when exactly I started loving the stuff, but I do. Thinking about a burnt bottom-of-the-pot cup of crap-brand coffee gets me really excited inside.
I was here in town at the Lab Cup (Labrador Cup, soccer championship for Labrador) and went to the canteen to see if they have coffee. The volunteer didn't know, she asked someone else, he told me it was really old and strong and I wouldn't want it. I bought a burger and a hotdog, scarfed them down, and drank the reject coffee that they didn't charge me for. One good thing about liking bad coffee is often events will just give away their last cup for free because they don't feel it's worth charging for it. It is like finding gold in garbage, except the garbage is just coffee and the gold is also, just coffee.
Another place with shitty coffee, the funeral home here. They have a lounge and people bring food there for the bereaved, and also there is a coffee maker because people always like to be drinking coffee when they get together. A cup of coffee gives purpose, presence, activity. It is like smoking a cigarette except you don't have to go outside where it is cold (yes it is cold here the last week of May, it is now June and it may well snow overnight!) and also no one will try to make you quit and there isn't a massive advertising campaign to get you addicted.
Anyways there is coffee there, and I have drank a whole bunch of it. It is drip coffee, left in a pot on the burner. It is the best kind of shitty coffee, because drip coffee is super lame and leaving it on the burner scorches the taste and concentrates the beverage through reduction. It is truly the best shitty coffee.
The last night of the visitation was also the first night of the college convocation, so they had two leftover 25-liter thermoses from Tim Horton's that they sent our way, and Tim Horton's makes shitty drip coffee, but the coffee goes right from the drip machine to the thermos and therefore the coffee does not burn, so I did not think I'd get coffee as shitty as I was hoping when I tapped the coffee thermos. But lo, Surprise! The clever people at Tim Horton's, making minimum wage for a shitty job, managed to throw a pot of steeped tea into the coffee thermos by accident! Now that, that is some bad coffee, and I was loving it.
And there I was, in Filatre's Funeral home's lounge, sipping shitty tea-coffee, eating another of the Subway sandwiches from the platter the owner brought us, while two rooms over my dad lay, looking himself in another plaid shirt with his cell phone and his linesman's scissors (they can cut through pennies) in his holster on his belt, laid flat in the coffin as people stood around trying to do what they were supposed to do, what they think they ought to do.
Man I love shitty coffee. Also it was great to see all those people again, all those people I haven't seen in two years or more. Good old friends. Old family friends. Man it was nice.
I did not know why people brought food to the bereaved, but now it makes sense. You don't want to cook and you don't remember to eat, but I ate god knows how many of those half-size subway sandwiches on the party platter the owner brought. Just fucking pounded them back, and ate desert. You do not think to eat and you don't feel hungry so if people didn't constantly show up with plates of food you would probably starve to death!
Man has it been odd being back. A lot of mixed emotions, you know, all over the place. God damn I love home. There are mountains here! They are ancient and humble now, presumably in the past though they were taller than the Himalayas. They are tiny now, but my town is in a valley/on a low sandy plateau, so you see mountains in each direction! You do not see the sea but Lake Melville (which isn't a lake) is there at the end of town and the powerful strong Churchill runs alongside the valley. That river has still not discovered it's new identity since they damned the falls in the sixties or whenever, but it is powerful strong and big and broad and exceptionally high this season. We walked the new causeway across the river (not a pedestrian bridge) and it was hells of hells of scary. It is a tiny grate and a tiny railing and that river is deep and strong and cold. Three college kids here died shortly before my dad did, maybe a week or so, because they found a boat by Muskrat Falls and hopped in for kicks. They got overpowered and their bodies have not (and probably will not) been found. Also a plane crashed two days after he died, with a pilot and passenger on board. The pilot was the husband of my mom's friend, who is just pregnant. It has not been a good time for Goose Bay, I tell you, not a good time.
We have spent the last week gutting our old home. My older brother is working in Newfoundland now, my younger brother is here for the summer (but was not living at home) but will not be back here much. My mom left dad just about a year ago because of problems, and I have been living with her these past few months. None of us will live here so we are selling it, but Andrew had to get back to work on the island as the seasons is winding up for his theater, and mom needs to get back to work, and so do I, so we have been tidying the house and the shed (the shed is as big as the house) of all the old clobber and garbage and wasted space so we can sell it. None of us will live here, and we needed to get it dealt with now as it's $1000 or more to fly here, round trip, so we figured to deal with the house and the sale and the things now as much as possible.
We had two truckloads of mac computers, printers, and monitors alone!
Damn it has been a difficult two weeks, two weeks ago I was at work building bikes for kids, then mom came in to tell me he had died. Since then we have flown home and seen everyone and buried him next to his mother and discarded much of what was in the house and shed.
Many things we have kept, many things are good, but lots was obsolete or unnecessary, so we have purged, good lord have we purged. Invaluable help from the family we have had, but it has still been tough as tough can be.
I am drinking some coffee that could be shittier. It was made in a tiny french press and is pretty OK besides being a bit too week. I am drinking it from a red Coronation Street mug. Damn I love mugs. Shitty mugs, great mugs. Not the novelty boob-shaped mug that I threw out three days ago, that is stupid. But this mug is nice, and I liked the tacky old mug that my host here didn't mind me taking on the road. It was a terrible colour and an odd shape, but it carried coffee in it and I drank it and I was glad for it.
My host here, my hosts here right now are the Lockharts. They are some of our oldest, best friends. Their sons came in for the funeral and carried the coffin to the grave. Their parents are putting up my mom and me until we leave, since our house is now packaged up and being viewed for sale. Don has made cookies, for which I am grateful. Goddamn I love coffee and cookies at 12:30 in the morning!
My father was an alcoholic and I'm not sure if he was drunk of hungover when he died. He was a great man for a lot of years but he had vices and depression and a drinking problem and denial. I wish I'd called him more, I wish I'd come home a year ago and fixed him but I know I couldn't and there was not a person at that funeral that didn't feel some guilt at not having tried harder to help him. Not that people hadn't tried hard, goddamnit.
I do not know if he was drunk or hungover when he died, but I know there was chocolate milk spilled on the floor and it was probably the morning. Maybe he was not even drunk, maybe he was doing better, but that is wishful thinking and I have no reason to believe it would have been so.
It is difficult, this!
We have to finish in the shed tomorrow and the day after, there are tools there to be boxed up and stored with our uncle Bernie. Also I need to sort out how uncle wade will deal with the remaining, unknown guitars. There are a bunch of semi-functional guitars that may or may not belong to us and may or may not be there for repairs that were not done.
Goddamn it is a bunch to deal with.
We all three sons played the old Gretsch Country Gentleman that he bought of his uncle years ago. It is the prize of his collection and it is gorgeous, gorgeous to play and hold. There is gold plated bits on it, though the gold is worn through in some spots from years of playing years ago. It is a beautiful thing but none of us deserve to play it.
We are not sure what year it is, but it is lovely.
Anyways, I am about out of batteries, catch you all later.
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Topic: Blog Thread III : Look Who's Blogging Now (Read 912848 times)