The Empty Chair

3am Stories...

Someone sent me this at 3am. A guy I barely know...connected through a mutual friend. He said he needed to get this off his chest before the details faded. Before it stopped feeling real. I read it once. Then again. Then I sat in the dark for a long time.

This is his story. I'm just the one sharing it.

---

I live in Bukit Ho Swee. Old estate. The kind where the HDB blocks still have that faded pastel paint and the corridors are so narrow your neighbours can hear you sneeze. It's quiet here. Not the peaceful kind. The kind where people keep to themselves and close their gates early.

There's a coffee shop downstairs at my block. Nothing fancy. Plastic chairs. Fluorescent lights. One zi char stall, one drink stall, one economy rice, and an aunty selling kaya toast in the morning. The kind of place tourists will never find and Singaporeans walk past every day without looking.

I started noticing him about a year ago.

Every night. 6:30 PM.
Same table.
Corner seat facing the TV that nobody watches.

He'd sit down, order kopi-o kosong, and one plate of rice. Always economy rice. Always the same...one meat, one veg. Nothing extra. He ate slow. Not because he wanted to enjoy it. Because he had nowhere else to be.

After he finished, he didn't leave. He'd sit there. Staring at the table. Sometimes watching people walk past. Sometimes just looking at his hands. The drink stall uncle would refill his kopi without asking. They had that kind of understanding. The kind you build over years without ever learning each other's name.

One night I was tabao-ing dinner and the coffee shop was almost empty. Just him. And me. And the drink stall uncle wiping down the counter.

I sat two tables away. Eating. Scrolling my phone. The way everyone does.
Then I heard something. Soft. Almost nothing. But in an empty coffee shop at 8 PM, you hear everything.
He was talking. To the empty chair across from him.

Not loud.
Not crazy.
Just talking.
The way you talk to someone who used to sit there.

"Today damn hot, ah. You always say drink more water. I drink already lah."
Pause. Like he was waiting for a reply.

"The fish today not bad. You would say too salty. Everything also too salty to you."
I put my phone down.

He talked to that chair for ten minutes. About the weather. About the food. About a show on Channel 8 he watched that afternoon. Normal things. Everyday things. The kind of things you only say to someone you've shared a life with.

When he stopped, he folded his napkin, put it on the plate, and sat there. Quiet again. Hands on the table. Like the conversation was over and now they were just sitting together. The way old couples do.

I couldn't look away. And I couldn't look at him either. So I just sat there. Pretending to eat. Feeling something crack inside my chest. He came every night. I started paying attention.

Monday. Kopi-o kosong. Economy rice. Empty chair.
Tuesday. Same.
Wednesday. Same.
Thursday...he brought two kopi. Set one across the table. Didn't touch it. Let it go cold.
That was the night I moved to the table beside him.

I didn't plan it. Didn't rehearse anything. I just picked up my plate and sat one table away. Close enough to say something. Far enough not to intrude.
"Uncle, the economy rice here not bad hor?"

He looked at me. Surprised. Like he forgot other people could see him.
"Not bad lah. But last time better. The aunty before this one...wah, her braised pork. My wife always order double."

First time he mentioned her to a stranger. First time he talked to a real person at that coffee shop, I think.

His name was Mr Tan. Seventy-eight years old. Lived on the ninth floor. Same block as me. Been there since 1970...moved in right after the old kampung houses got torn down from the fire. Raised three kids in a three-room flat. Worked as a bus driver for SBS for 35 years. Retired in 2003.

His wife passed two years ago. Stroke. Fast. She was at the wet market at Beo Crescent one morning buying ikan bilis and she collapsed near the vegetable stall. Gone by the time the ambulance reached SGH.

"She go market every day, you know. Every single day. Rain also go. I tell her, 'Aiyah, today don't go lah.' She say, 'Then tonight you eat what?'"
He smiled when he said that. The kind of smile that's held together by thread.

"After she go, I don't know how to do anything. Fifty-two years she cook for me. Wash my clothes. Remember my medicine. I didn't even know how to switch on the washing machine. Fifty-two years and I cannot even do my own laundry."

He taught himself. YouTube. At seventy-eight. His grandson showed him once, during Chinese New Year...the last time anyone visited.
Now he watches cooking videos at 2 AM because he can't sleep and the flat is too quiet.

"You know what's the worst part? Not the cooking. Not the cleaning. The worst part is dinner time. Every night, 6 PM, she sit at the kitchen table. We eat together. Talk about nothing. Complain about the neighbours. Laugh about the same old things. Now I sit there and the chair is empty. The flat so quiet I can hear the clock."

That's why he comes to the coffee shop.
Not for the food.
For the noise.
For the sound of other people living.
Because the flat upstairs is a museum of someone who's gone, and the silence in there is the kind that makes you forget you're still alive.

I asked about his children.
He went quiet. Long quiet.
"My son is in KL. Working. He call sometimes. Maybe once a month. Very short. 'Pa, you okay?' 'Okay.' 'Okay, bye.' Like that lah. My daughter...she's in Woodlands. Far. She got her own family. Two kids. Busy. I understand. Last time I see her was Qing Ming. We go cemetery together. After that, nothing."

"And your grandson?"

"Ah boy ah. He's in NS. He text me Happy Birthday in September. Wrong month. My birthday is March."
He laughed. But not the funny kind.

"I don't blame them. Life in Singapore is like that. Everyone busy. HDB so expensive. Kids got tuition. Work got overtime. By the time you finish everything, where got time? I also last time like that. My own mother...I put her in the old folks' home in Yishun. Visited on weekends. Sometimes skip. She never say anything. But now I understand what her face was trying to tell me."

He looked at the empty chair.
"Now I'm the one sitting and waiting. Funny, right? Life is a circle."

I started sitting with him.
Not every night.
But most nights.

Three, four times a week. I'd come down at 6:30, order my food, sit at his table. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we just ate in silence. Both looking at the TV that nobody watches, eating economy rice, and just being there.

He told me about driving the bus for twenty years. The same route. Bukit Merah to Tampines. He knew the regulars. The auntie who always exact change. The school kids who'd run to catch the bus at Queenstown. A young woman who rode every morning for three years and one day just stopped...he still wonders what happened to her.

He told me about his wife.
How she'd argue with the fishmonger at Beo Crescent wet market every single morning over twenty cents.
How she kept every red packet from Chinese New Year in a tin box under the bed...forty years of ang pows she never opened.

How she hummed Hokkien songs while cooking and didn't know she was doing it.
"I miss the humming the most. You know, when someone is always there, you don't hear them anymore. Then they go. And suddenly the house is so loud with silence."

One Thursday he didn't show up. 6:30. 7:00. 7:30. His table was empty.

I went upstairs.
Ninth floor.
Knocked. No answer.
Knocked again.

Door opened. He was in his singlet and shorts. Eyes red. Holding a photo frame.
"Uncle, you okay? You didn't come down."
"Today is her birthday." He showed me the photo. A woman in a red cheongsam. Smiling. Young. "1971. Our first year married."

He'd been sitting in the flat all day. Looking at photos. Talking to her. Cooking her favourite dish...steamed fish with ginger and soy sauce and setting it on the table.

Two plates.
Two bowls of rice.
Two pairs of chopsticks.
"I cook for her every year on her birthday. I know she's not here. But my hands remember how she liked it. Ginger must be thin. Soy sauce not too much. If I stop cooking it, then nobody in the world remembers how she liked her fish. And then she really gone."

I sat with him. We ate the fish. It was good. The ginger was thin. The soy sauce was just right.
That night I went home and called my mother.

We talk maybe once a week. Short. "Ma, you eat already?" "Eat already." "Okay." "Okay." Like a script we both memorised. Efficient. Singaporean.
But that night I stayed on the phone. Thirty minutes. I asked her about her day. What she cooked. Whether the downstairs neighbour still plays mahjong until midnight. She was confused at first. "Why you ask so many question? You okay or not?"

"I'm okay, Ma. Just wanted to talk."
Silence on the line. Then she said something she hasn't said in years.

"I'm glad you called. The house very quiet lately."
The house very quiet lately.

Same thing Mr Tan said. Same words. Same voice. Different person.

Mr Tan is still there. Every night. 6:30. Corner table. Kopi-o kosong. Economy rice. I sit with him most nights now. It's our thing. Sometimes the drink stall uncle joins for ten minutes when business is slow. Sometimes the zi char aunty sends over an extra dish..."Tell Uncle Tan this one on the house."

A small table at a coffee shop in Bukit Ho Swee. Three, four people. Most nights, just two. That's his whole world now. Last week he said something I can't stop thinking about.
"You know what I want to tell you ah? Last time I was a bus driver. Every day I drive past so many people. Thousands. I see them all but I know none of them. Now I'm old. I sit here. People walk past me. They see me but they don't know me. Same same. Just now I'm the one sitting at the bus stop."

He took a sip of kopi.
"But you. You sit down. You eat with me. You listen to an old man talk rubbish about his wife and his bus and his fish. Nobody asked you to do that. But you did. And I want to tell you...that's the most important thing anyone has done for me since she died."

I didn't know what to say. So I just said: "Tomorrow same time?"
"Same time lah. Where else I got to go?"
He laughed. Real this time.

---

That was his story. And I haven't been the same since I read it.

Here's what I took from it:
Your parents are not going to ask you to come. They're not going to say "I'm lonely." They're not going to tell you the flat is too quiet or that they talk to an empty chair at dinner. They'll say "I'm okay." They'll say "Don't worry." They'll say "You busy, it's okay, next time."

But next time becomes next month.
Next month becomes Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year becomes Qing Ming.

And one day you'll be the one sitting at the coffee shop. Talking to an empty chair. Wishing someone would sit down.
You don't need to fly home. You don't need a grand gesture. You don't need to fix anything.

Just call. Stay on the line longer than two minutes. Ask what they ate. Ask about the neighbour. Ask about nothing. Let them talk.

Or better yet...go downstairs.
Walk to the coffee shop.
Sit with them. Eat the economy rice.
Watch the TV nobody watches.
Say nothing if you want. Just be there.

Because one day that table will be empty. And you'll wish you could hear them complain about the salty fish one more time.
Don't wait until the chair is empty to realise it was full.
Go sit with someone tonight.

— 3am Stories. Pass it on.