just your most.... normal coffee

when terrible things happen, there are moments of levity. they feel wrong, and you feel guilty, but you can’t help it.

this one happened when we had called the family back to the hospital to say goodbye to nancy. we were all gathered in the waiting room, waiting for her brother to arrive from georgia—who, based on the timing, seemed to be making the trip on foot with no gps.

one of my husband’s cousins offered to go get coffee for everyone. i would have sawed off a leg or eaten a cactus to leave the waiting room, so i volunteered to go with him.

we wandered around for a while because neither of us actually knew if the lobby had coffee. eventually we found the panera and got in line. nate stepped up and said, “six coffees, please.”

i hadn’t slept since 8 a.m. the day before. it was now 10 a.m. i was eating a fruit cup with my hands and staring at the cashier like she could solve the world’s problems.

she said, “would you like a coffee tote?”

nate and i stared at her for what felt like three minutes, then at each other for what felt like eight, and then said, “sure,” in unison. i think i also added, “whatever the chef recommends.”

then she asked another question that probably makes sense if you sell coffee but made no sense to us: “what kind of coffee?”

we stared at her again—me shoving fruit into my mouth, nate silently reconsidering what coffee is—as if she had asked us the meaning of the universe.

finally, he said, “just… your most normal coffee.”

the poor woman went to make us a tote of her most normal coffee, and what felt like three seconds—or several lifetimes later, because nate’s aunt and my mother-in-law was dying a few floors up—she came back and asked what kind of sugar we wanted.

at some point in there, we had gotten deeply involved in a discussion about the show land man and completely forgot we were in panera, or that the coffee salesperson existed at all. we were genuinely startled that someone was interrupting our very important conversation about billy bob thornton’s latest acting achievement.

pulling ourselves together, we made a lot of eye contact back and forth with each other—neither of us knowing how many sugars exist in the world—before i said, “an assortment.”

nate inhaled a bagel. we asked for an unreasonable number of cups. then we got back on the elevator, carrying enough coffee for a small city, and started laughing.