Sips of Solitude

Portrait of an Old Women | Flair Doherty | Charcoal

Sips of Solitude by Eleham Salo

Our cultural tradition of roasting coffee at home is a ceremonial way to show hospitality to a group and enjoy a shared experience of freshly roasted beans. All members are present in the living room as the warmth comes from connection, rather than the empty smoke that roams the air. My grandmother sits by the stove, stirring the beans in a blackened pan, waiting for them to darken from their original shading. Without fail, she did this every day. It allowed my parents to complete other things until they could arrive and sip the coffee with her. To my grandmother, It was more than just a drink, it was her mechanism for bringing family together.

I never thought that something so simple, something she loved so deeply, could be what took her away from us. It was the elephant in the room that she was sick—badly sick—but none of us realized just how serious it was.

She had always been healthy, never complained, and never hinted that anything was wrong. That’s why it felt impossible when, one day, she just wasn’t. As if the air around her had shifted before any of us even noticed. A persistent cough that was seen by doctors as nothing serious, turned out to be stage iii lung cancer. She had never smoked a day in her life, but the second-hand exposure was evidently strong. The doctors missed it. We all missed it. Maybe we trusted that she was fine because she had always been fine. But by the time we knew, it was already too late.

Weeks later, “She passed,” my aunt said. Just like that. Three words were spoken into the silence between us. I knew my mother would be shattered, and for a brief moment, I was trapped in the space between knowing and telling and the parallels between loss and love.

I remember the nervousness of those few minutes, waiting for my mother’s realization. The way the world kept revolving outside; cars passing, birds moving, people laughing somewhere in the distance, all as if nothing had changed. But inside me, everything had. 

When my mom entered my room, I couldn’t look her in the eyes. But she knew. The moment she saw my face, the moment I hesitated, she knew. “No,” she whispered, her voice already breaking. And then, just like that, I watched, helpless, as the strongest woman I ever knew unraveled in front of me. I had never seen her like that before and I never saw her like that again. 

The front door opened over and over as neighbors came to pay their respects. Grief is cruel like that. It spreads, clinging to the air like the smoke from my grandmother’s roasted coffee.

For a long time, I could never settle the unanswered thoughts. Was it really the coffee? The roasting, the daily inhalation—had that been the silent killer? It didn’t make sense. In other parts of the world, people have done this for generations, living well into old age. But my grandmother's lungs were fragile, and what she loved most may have been what her body couldn’t withstand. That is a weight one never forgets.

No matter how much I can replay a memory in my mind, a similar scenery remains. The way she coughed sometimes, but eventually laughed because of the escape it brought to her. That may have been the unnoticeable beginning. The cancer growing inside her all along, hidden in the daily rituals of our home. 

Even with seven people, the house felt emptier as it was no longer eight. The mornings were quieter, and I could not hear the clicking sound of coffee being roasted. There were no long calls at exactly 12 pm, whenever my grandmother was out of state. For weeks, the smell of coffee had been a wound on its own. Every sip of coffee that I watched my parents take, was a reminder of my grandmother’s absence. A sip of solitude. Although she was one person, it always felt like more, when in her presence. 

One evening, two months after she was gone, I found myself sitting by the stove, staring at the pan my grandmother always used. My hands reached for the beans, the way hers used to. I wanted to recreate the familiar crackling in the ways I remembered it, to smell the rich scent that once filled our home in the ways she filled it. But as the beans darkened, I found myself choking on the weight of it all, memory could never replace presence.  I turned off the heat and stepped away.

I wasn’t ready.

Even now, coffee is everywhere. Its scent from cafes, from the cups of strangers, my classmates, and from my own home. But it never really smelled like coffee anymore, after that day, It smelled like her. It smells like warmth and laughter, but also of something lost that I can never get back. And yet, I still breathe it in.