Cocoa Coffee

I am drinking hot chocolate laced with a splash of french vanilla capuccino. I love me some hot chocolate. I love me the smell of coffee, but can only drink that crap if it is lost in a sea of chocolate. I love it that way.

Coffee is a happy memory of mine linked to my younger, gentler days when I would beg my parents to allow me to spend the night at Grandma Faye's and Grandpa Vic's house. In the morning, I would wake up to the sounds of the birds busy in the trees, someone mowing their lawn in the distance, the flowing sight of the curtains floating on the breeze coming through the slightly-opened window and the smell of coffee and bacon. Grandma was a full-blooded English Mormon Good Girl married to a full-blooded Italian Catholic Bad Boy who loved himself some coffee every morning with his eggs and bacon.

Grandpa was in the hospital room when Grandma died on April 3, 2003, after her fifth open heart surgery. It was a traumatic death scene, complete with spraying blood and cries of agony. In that moment, Grandpa became frozen, staring at the blood splatters on the floor and slowly began his slide away from life. On that day, I lost both my grandparents, although Grandpa still breathes and walks today. He breathes, but has no idea who I am, where he is or who Faye was. He still believes, after four years, that he is on vacation in Texas after being whisked away from his home of fifty-five years. His home, his possessions and his belongings that he worked so hard for his entire life have been sold out from underneath him by his sons and he has no idea. His entire life is as if it never was.

While he still lived at home here in Salt Lake, my uncles and their wives would visit him dutifully. For quite some time there was huge strife in the family because the local siblings - the sisters - were unable to physically, emotionally and mentally support their father as much as the brothers felt they should be. Neighbors began calling saying they were frightened that Grandpa was going to hurt himself or someone else with how crazy he was driving. They were frightened he would be hurt or lost on his meandering walks in the middle of the night which led him all over the city, collecting garbage from the gutters that he believed were artistic treasures and began adorning the walls of his kitchen. They were frightened by his sudden appearance at their windows as he peered inside, surely looking for the home that was his but seemed to be lost now. Things slowly got so sad.

One uncle left a list of things to do taped to the kitchen cupboard before he left. A list of daily reminders because Grandpa was beginning to have difficulties remembering the simplest things:

1. Take a shower.
2. Sleep in the bed.
3. Put on clean underwear each day.
4. Put clothes in the hamper each night.
5. Clean your teeth and put them in every day.
6. Eat fruit each day.
7. Drink no coffee or beer.
8. Brush your hair.
9. Call one family member each day. The numbers are by the phone in the closet.
10. Say your prayers.

I was offended when I saw the list. Especially, as you can probably guess, by numbers seven and ten. Beer and coffee were loves of my Grandpa and I don't ever remember my grandfather praying. I asked him what he thought of the list and he snickered, "Aw, that list? It helps him feel better."

Even when he was losing his mind, Grandpa never lost his sense of humor or irony. Another time, while he was visiting here, our family met at a Vietnamese restaurant for Pho (Vietnamese soup, pronounced Fu, like Fuck) I had never had Pho before, nor had most of my family. My uncle thought it would be cool to introduce us to something new. Grandpa sat beside me, swirling his soup around and staring at the odd-looking concoction, eating carefully only that which he could recognize. The entire time he sat there silent, staring at that soup and I could feel him giggling inside. He had an odd smirk on his face and a glimmer in his eye when I glanced at him.

I leaned toward him, lowering my voice and suspecting his answer, "Grampa... you like the soup?"

He grimaced and whispered, "Not really. It's weird. But I will eat it like a good boy."

[funny sidenote on the name of this soup. The aunt and uncle who invited us all there are some of the most prim, proper Mormons I have ever met. I don't think I have ever heard either of them say so much as "Dang it" let alone anything tough like "Damn." My aunt, who is the most prim of the two, kept saying "Pho" with such relish that I glanced at her every time. She said it almost too frequently, with such passion and as if it was the coolest word she had ever heard. After hearing her use the word with such excitement four separate times in, seemingly, a matter of 30 seconds, I said, "Ya know, Auntie, that is sounding sorta nasty." Her eyes grew wide and she asked with a gasp, "Nasty?! What sounds nasty?" I was perversely enjoying the razzing I was giving her and knew she would be mortified when the meaning of what I was implying sank in to her demurely thick skull. "The way you say 'Pho' makes it sound more like a swear word." She repeated the word one more time to figure it out. I raised my eyebrows and waited for the realization to sink in. The blush began creeping up her neck as she started dishing the Pho to her grandson. From that point on, it became "fff-*blush*-SOUP!"]

When Grandma died, my uncles - who both served their missions in Italy - swept in and began, in earnest, the conversion of my Grandfather who swore in his sanity that he would never convert to Mormonism, even though he was more knowledgeable about the religion than pretty much any Mormon I knew. For all of their lives he had been, in no uncertain terms, emphatic that he would never be Mormon. While I understand and respect their point of view, I feel angry that they did not honor his beliefs at a time when they should have most honored them. I feel angry that they played on his emotions in his dwindling mental state. He told me once in a moment when he remembered who Faye was, "I want to see my Honey Girl again. They told me the only way I could do that was to get baptized. It's what she would have wanted. So I did it."

They did it without inviting us in Salt Lake - those who they knew opposed the coercive nature of their conversion process. All we got was a note in the mail from Texas with a picture of Grandpa in his white baptism jumpsuit standing in front of the church building. The look on his face was distant and detached. He had no idea, I believe, about what was going on in that moment or what it really meant to be baptized. Something in my Grandfather's stubborn Italian way, though, holds him back from finalizing the entire process and going through the Temple.

Knowing what was in his heart and hoping that it had not been completely taken away from him, I asked him the last time he was here in Utah, "Grampa, ya gonna go through the Temple?"

His answer: "HELL NO!" He grinned at me and I laughed. He has no idea who he is. He has no idea who I am. He has no idea where he is and yet, part of him still knows he is a proud Italian Catholic man depsite the fact he has been dipped in the waters of Mormonism.