When my mother-in-law was dying, she faced illness with tremendous equanimity. She did not want pain—and luckily, medicine could take care of that—but she was not afraid of dying. We never saw her flinch in its face. I had always been afraid of death, waking from nightmares of its imminence even in my childhood. Much to my surprise, I was able to be present and useful and near to her as death approached near. I was surprised to learn I could sit by the side of death. I was grateful to be able to help this great woman who by example showed me so much of what it meant to be a matriarch. By letting me near, she showed me I was much stronger than I’d known I was.
The last word we heard Zememesh Berhe say was “bun,” which means coffee, in Tigrinya, and which stands for so much more that is encompassed in the Eritrean coffee ritual. Green coffee beans are roasted in a long-armed aluminum pot with the onomatopoeic name menkeshkesh, for the sounds the beans make when the person roasting shakes the pan gently, carefully watching for when the oils began to gleam and the beans to brown. Once the beans are roasted to the desired depth of flavor, the roaster takes the pan around the room, beginning with the eldest person present and going to each person, inviting them to fan the coffee smoke to smell it. We gave this job to Solo when he was just old enough to carry the hot pan. Then the beans are spread to cool on a straw mat called mishrafat, then ground and brewed three different times and served in tiny, handle-less china cups called finjal, almost always with sugar and sometimes with warmed milk. I learned to say “tu’um” for delicious. It is considered very rude to leave before “third coffee,” for each stage comes with its own blessing and marks more space for communal chat. How I loved to watch Ficre perform this ritual, and then to see the pride with which our eldest son learned it from his father. Coffee ceremony was the most sacred home ritual there was.
My mother-in-law’s last night on earth, a fox crossed our path in Branford, Connecticut, as we left the hospice. We knew somehow that it was her, as I now know the ravenous hawk came to take Ficre. Do I believe that? Yes, I do. Poetic logic is my logic. I do not believe she was a fox. But I believe the fox was a harbinger. I believe that it was a strange enough occurrence that it should be heeded. Zememesh Berhe, the quick, red fox, soon passed from this life to the next.
Ten
We had fifteen Christmases together. Almost fifteen years of marriage, sixteen years together, 1996 to 2012. We always said it felt like longer than it was. I would estimate at the end that we had a twenty-five-year marriage, and Ficre would agree. That long, that much struggle, that much jubilee. In our extended family, and family of friends, two cancers, two heart surgeries, one drug addiction, two mental hospitalizations, marriages, babies, funerals. Easters and Thanksgivings. Our friends’ parents and one friend’s son died; together we went bearing food and hot coffee. Together we went to the various places of worship in our best black clothes. Three houses, two cities. One job change, two closed businesses, one started business. Money went, money came. Several bad boyfriends of nieces, several good, three lovely husbands of nieces, one lovely wife of a nephew, six lovely babies. Four homes owned, three sold. Hemorrhoid surgery, dental surgery. No broken limbs. One political regime change, the end of one war, the start of another. An East African American U.S. president. Several refugees. Two U.S. naturalization swearings-in: two new citizenships.
Together we chose two day-cares, two nannies, fired one nanny in six days because at one and a half Solo said NO, stayed with the other for three years and wept when it was time for her to leave us, one nursery school, two elementary schools, one middle school, one high school. We planned fifteen Thanksgiving dinners, fifteen Easters, and at last, one Feast of the Seven Fishes. One Easter Ficre found a sheep farmer in Cheshire, Connecticut, and had a lamb slaughtered for his sister Tadu, for her tsebhe—the rich and spicy Eritrean meat stew—and her roast. We found where we could buy Italian Easter bread shaped in a cross with hard-boiled eggs baked in. Buon Pascua, he’d say, and so would I.
Three trips to Italy, where we had family and which was our ironic colonial demi-motherland, each time to different places: Rome, Venice, Florence, Amalfi, yes, but also Bari, Ceglie, Ferrarra, to see in-laws and friends. London, Scotland, Spain, Oakland, the diaspora of our family. Milan awaited, and bella Toscana, and Naples, once the crime settled down, and Sicilia; he wanted to smell the mint crushed underfoot. The Alhambra awaited, and the orange blossoms in Southern Spain in very early springtime.