Meatballs & Mortality

A semblance of order is beginning to descend on our apartment as familiar things are put into their final places–hopefully for a few years at least. We had one of those “duh” moments were we looked at all the CDs we’d brought across the ocean and realized we had nothing to put them into, so it was Yet Another Trip To Ikea to get a few more of those final knick knacks, like CD racks and shoe racks (since, now that extra shoes and boots had arrived, we suddenly had a dearth of footwear storage space).

It was while we were having lunch at the Ikea cafeteria that we saw an old man in a wheel chair who, on surface inspection, seemed to have taken a nap in his chair. This would quickly prove to NOT be the case when the PA at Ikea suddenly announced, “To all Ikea managers; there is a code 40 in the cafeteria.”

This was further reinforced by the fact that the woman who was clearly the napping man’s wife, was in a panic.

I think you can probably guess the rest of the story. We sat there in quiet fascination as the paramedics showed up, the Ikea managers themselves simply stood around helplessly and moved around tables and chairs so they could get a gurney through. It was probably a stroke or cardiac arrest or something to that effect, but fortunately there was a hospital within sight of the Ikea itself, and so it was only a 2 minute drive to get the old man and his deeply troubled wife over there.

Of course this necessitated a talk about life, death and other stuff and then, probably just because I had seen one old man struggle with life and death, when I saw another one struggling with his heavy boxes, I helped carry them onto the bus, off the bus and into the subway station, into the train, into another train to transfer to another line and off the train when we parted ways.

Okay, so I’m a softie. Fine.