The Night Shift at the Funeral Home

Lao He is fifty-four and has worked the night shift at the north-end funeral home for six years.

The night shift at a funeral home, to put it plainly, is keeping watch. Watching the cold-storage room so the power does not trip, watching the farewell hall so the lights do not go out, watching for the occasional family member who arrives on the last train of the night just to see a loved one one more time.

Lao He does not like to tell people where he works. When asked, he mumbles that he keeps night duty at the unit. But secrets do not keep long. Once, when a funeral was held in his neighborhood, someone recognized him and muttered behind his back: keeping company with the dead all night — does that not give you the chills?

Lao He does not feel the chills. He has grown fond of the dead.

The strange thing is the third cold-storage cabinet.

It sits at the innermost end of the cold room, against the wall. By the rules, every body that comes in has a number and a record, but cabinet three has no regular occupant — sometimes full, sometimes empty, more often empty. In his third month Lao He noticed that on the nights of the first and fifteenth of every lunar month, something taps softly inside cabinet three. Not the compressor — a knock, knock, knock, very light, as if someone were rapping the metal from within with a knuckle.

The first time he heard it, Lao He started, and steeled himself to shine a flashlight on it: the seal on the door was intact, the number plate empty, and plainly no one was inside. He took it for a rat. But since when do rats keep such a schedule, picking the first and fifteenth, three knocks at a time, like counting?

He mentioned it to the old director on the day shift. The director smoked a while, silent, and at last said: that cabinet was tended by a senior worker once. Twenty years ago there was an old man, living alone, his daughter away in another city. One night he passed, and no one knew. By the time the daughter rushed back, the old man had lain inside three days. The daughter hugged the cabinet and wept, saying, Father, wait for me. Later the old man was cremated; every Qingming the daughter comes, and pastes a slip of paper on that cabinet, writing, Father, I am here.

The director paused. The cabinet stays empty, but the old man seems to always be thinking of going out to see his daughter. Three knocks — maybe he is counting. When his daughter was three, he used to count every night to see if she had fallen asleep.

Lao He asked no more.

From then on, on the first and fifteenth, when Lao He kept his watch, he added one thing: he would bring a chair and sit before cabinet three, saying nothing, just keeping it company. After the cabinet tapped three times, he would answer in his heart for the daughter: I am here, Dad, I am with you.

Once, a girl really did come in the dead of night, saying she had just arrived on the last bus and had to see her father one last time. Lao He led her there; she knelt before the cabinet and wept, Father, wait for me. Standing outside, Lao He suddenly felt that the soft taps from cabinet three sounded like a sigh of relief.

Later Lao He picked up a habit: on the first and fifteenth he sets a cup of clear tea before cabinet three, tea he brews himself, still warm.

Midnight Record note: In this life the thing to fear is not death, but dying unbeknownst to anyone, with not even a soul to say I am here. The soft taps of cabinet three are no ghost — they are an old father counting whether his daughter has fallen asleep. What Lao He keeps company with is not a cabinet, but, on behalf of the daughter who cannot arrive in time, saying to a man who left too lonely: I am here with you. Having seen so much parting at the funeral home, Lao He understands better than anyone: to have someone keep watch, someone remember you — even across a sheet of metal — that is what it means to have lived not in vain.