The Coffee Pot

(Writing Our Grief paper, December 6, 2013)

Mike’s coffee pot died recently.  This was no mere Mr. Coffee, nor was it a simple matter of going to the nearest big box store to get it.  Mike was an avid coffee drinker.  He loved coffee with a passion, and we used to joke that if we cut open his veins, there’d be pure caffeine running through.  I should have asked the medical examiner if that was true.  Mike’s odyssey to own a new coffee pot started when he decided he’d like to be able to make his own fresh-ground coffee every day before work.  He was convinced there was a pot out there that would fresh grind only enough beans to make exactly two cups of coffee for him, or 12 if he was entertaining.

When Mike was a little boy, he had a similar fascination with night tables.  His parents have long regaled us with stories of how he used to ask everyone he knew if they had a night table.  If they answered that they did, he wanted to know what was on it.  One fine Sunday, his parents took him to church, and the Bishop of Providence was conducting the service.  Afterwards, they all went to greet him, and Mike’s father Hank issued a stern warning that Mike was not to ask the bishop about his night table.  But sure enough, when it was his turn, Mike strolled up to the bishop and asked what was on his night table.

The coffee pot became the new night table.  He began to grill everyone he knew who drank coffee with the precision of an FBI task force.  The merits of fresh ground coffee was debated.  The merits of Keurig, Krups, Mr. Coffee, and Gevalia were studied.  Prices were compared.  Beans and brands were debated with fellow connoisseurs, and Mike gained new respect for a man at work who roasted his own beans and would pass the bounty along.  He found a new best friend when he met an aide for Senator Inouye from Hawaii, who used to pass bags of Kona beans along to him on the Metro once a month.

Eventually, he settled on a Krups KM7000, which was fully programmable, ground the beans fresh for anywhere from 2 to 12 cups of coffee, had a strength selector (which he immediately set to the strongest available), and had a golden filter.  It cost well over $200, but that’s what he wanted for Christmas, and so that’s what I bought for him, along with 5 pounds of his favorite Dunkin Donuts coffee beans.  We installed it in his office with a mini fridge to hold flavored creamers, I was regularly dispatched for sugar packets, and many was the morning I would hear that grinder going, smell coffee, and know Mike was going to work or reading the news.

And then: disaster.  My father was tasked with washing the carafe and broke it.  Mike was on the phone to Krups almost before he heard the crack.  In no time at all, he managed to convince the person on the phone that there was surely a manufacturing flaw that had caused the crack, not his father-in-law who is known within the family for breaking things with merely a passing glace.  And surely Krups would make it right.  And sure enough, within days, a new carafe was delivered to the door, and all was right with the world again.

In time, the filter wore out.  Krups assured Mike he could get a replacement at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and so again he got my father involved in the expedition, only to discover they couldn’t find it.  He called Krups, oozed on the charm and the “poor little blind guy” story, and Krups delivered a filter to our house with their compliments.

When Mike died, I wasn’t sure what to do with the coffee pot.  I don’t drink coffee and I didn’t want it sitting around taking up a lot of space and gathering dust.  Finally, I gave it to my mother, who shared Mike’s passion for coffee and many fond memories of morning coffee with her “favorite oldest son-in-law”.  For a year and half, it perked merrily on, and now it is gone, fallen victim to faulty wiring.  I’d like to think its spirit floated to heaven to reunite with its owner, and the two of them are sitting happily together, making and drinking endless cups of just right coffee, maybe with a mug kept on the night table.