Death is divided into three types: when a person's heartbeat stops and breathing ceases, they are biologically declared dead; when their funeral is held, they no longer exist in society—this is social death; when the last person in the world who remembers the deceased forgets them, that is true death, and the entire universe no longer has any relation to you.

As usual, I don’t like Mondays, because the weekend just passed; my round-trip commute to work now exceeds 60 kilometers, taking about 2 hours each day. On the way to work I often encounter some colleagues. I am relatively quiet, but inwardly I feel excited, counting how many times I have met them this week, what time they usually arrive, comparing with yesterday and today to see if there were any late arrivals? A mental counter has started…

I walk slowly in, gradually settling into the repetitive work; in the morning I send an expense report to a colleague, and she usually handles expenses quickly, basically within 15 minutes she would mark “1” to indicate received and completed. But today she didn’t; she sent me something else, “Please take a look to see if this is correct?” This surprised me; someone who is usually so professional can’t possibly not know this…

The morning in the office is quieter, much quieter than at noon; perhaps it’s because everyone has just woken up and is tired, but there is a phone ring that stands out: “Hello, what’s up? Hasn’t anyone been found yet? ……, oh okay, I’ll call again later.” There are many words, but I only heard a few phrases; in my mind I began to imagine, is the boss’s child or a relative so mischievous? Did they run away from home? The phone isn’t answering, haha, it must be a little kid. I was also chatting with colleagues on QQ; suddenly a colleague said: today it seems Mack (anonymous) didn’t come; I realized then that it wasn’t that she wasn’t professional, it wasn’t actually her.

But soon many conversations made people frown; they started making frequent calls, looking for someone everywhere. Considering Mack’s shy, introverted personality, not someone who would get drunk in a bar or sleep so deeply that she wouldn’t answer the phone, she normally has a sense of time. Mack is one of the people I frequently “count” on; every week I calculate how many times I encounter her, whether I am earlier or she is earlier. But we couldn’t find her; this actually left me with many internal guesses. Perhaps I mis-hit the mute and didn’t hear, or perhaps she was exhausted, slept deeply and didn’t hear…

Not long after, the supervisor suddenly ran out; on the other end of the line came, “No heartbeat.” The supervisor was so panicked that they repeated, “No heartbeat??” Many people stood up, frowning. I was idling, playing with my phone, when I saw my senior leader also stand up with a grave face, thinking they were going to check my phone, I quietly put the phone away and turned off the screen. Then someone let out a long, questioning sigh; I shifted my position and asked, “What happened?” A colleague said, “Mack didn’t come today, I heard the heartbeat stopped…” Fuck, I was extremely shocked… not believing it, for a moment I trembled, was this real, was anyone lying? Last Friday she was fine, how did she just vanish? Why?

In the small group chat, various discussions began; many sources started to spread: “This morning I called mom and dad and they didn’t answer, she’s out of town. Called a roommate to check, when the door opened, there was no heartbeat.” “When the door opened the lights were on, which means she didn’t die in her sleep; she had already died before 11 pm last night, more than ten hours ago.” “Really, fuck, is there any chance of rescue? If this had happened in the morning there might have been a rescue.” A wave of sighs.

I was extremely shocked and had a headache, trembling for a long time, goosebumps rose, I immediately went to the bathroom to dry-heave, not because of disgust but because the emotion had reached a tipping point and caused nausea. In the afternoon many coworkers asked about it, asking, “Did a girl in your company pass away?” including people from Shanghai, Tianjin, and so on; the circle is this small, as if everyone knew in an instant. To this day I still can’t believe it, but there is a rumor that she died from staying up late playing Jian Wang 3; I think this rumor has a 95% credibility, and the source might be the moment her roommate pushed the door. Because I know she rarely plays games, and I know it’s because in the elevator she was on the phone about Jian Wang 3; I even thought it was impressive that a girl actually played this old game…

I thought about it all afternoon and gradually calmed down, no longer trembling. I hope everyone gets normal rest and sleep, really try not to stay up late, it’s very bad for the body.

Also thinking about death, the person who was still in the group chat, working overtime on Saturday, suddenly left; what exactly is death? Is it sudden darkness? Is the soul rising, floating away from the body to observe the living self? Is it the blissful world depicted in The Legend of Sword and Fairy 3? Or is it nothingness, spent in hollowness, in emptiness? Am I afraid of death? I don’t think I’m particularly afraid; I’m more afraid that I will walk in front of those closest to me and they will suffer because of me. Perhaps once I have no attachments, I can face it normally. I used to be very afraid of death, afraid of my family’s departure, but later I gradually opened up. In my belief, only “death by memory” is true death, when the world no longer has anyone remembering you…

I love tomb-sweeping, an annual tradition since childhood when my father and mother would take me; up to now I’ve only missed one year due to the pandemic, when I couldn’t even walk and was carried up the hill. I kowtow and burn incense for wives I never met, and I can’t read the characters before the grave. Growing up, it changed from hating the difficult road to seeing it as a tradition; a person who died in 1960 is now 65 years past, yet their descendants still remember her. Every year we bring silver ingots, foil paper, and a heap of green rice dumplings as offerings, and we still remember her!

I have thought that I will definitely continue to visit the graves; in the future I will surely bring my son or daughter, and I will also bring my grandson, so they remember their ancestors’ names, sharing the same surname; the two people in the tomb were once young too, they once fell in love, their sweet talk and flirtations not much younger than us; imagining the past, it doesn’t seem so sad, and I feel more that I have the happiness of my parents as younger generations, all because of, “Remember.” And the inscriptions on both sides of the tombstone, after many years, gradually become legible and readable: “Not seeking good Feng Shui, but seeking virtuous descendants!”