"Bob's Dead"

So I'm in the McDonald's café in WalMart last Sunday morning. There are three elderly men (one looks to be in his late 60s, two older, possibly late 70s or even 80s) off to my left. Another elderly man comes in and sits down at a table directly on my left (one table over), opens up the paper on the table. One of the men in the group of three greets him and says they left the paper for him, because they know he likes to read it (while having his coffee/whatever).

They "know" each other, though the man immediately to my left is not in their clique.

Out of the blue, one of the three says to this new arrival, "Bob's dead." Just like that, no preliminaries. 

After the expected "Oh no," etc., it turns out that Bob was found dead in his bed by the apartment building superintendent, who had gone in to check on him because it was noticed that Bob's car hadn't moved in a few days.

Then--and I'm not kidding or making this up--one of the other in the group of three says, baldly, "My wife died."

I almost think he's joking, listening to this, but he's serious. She'd been ill for quite some time, apparently (I speculate cancer, of course), and after the extended sympathies it's generally decided that both Bob and the man's wife are in a better place. Both deaths seem, from what I gather, to have taken place within the span of a week.

One of the three men says to the new arrival that he bets he's sorry he came in today and sat down. I think to myself that I'm sorry I came in and sat down!

***

I went to a different McDonald's this morning, for a coffee and muffin.