Not all mom's and dad's children gathered there in front of our house. I said our house, meaning all the brothers and sisters, and I said it wrong. That house, in which lives for many years, my sister Elizabeth, is not our house anymore. It is hers and only hers.

And it is not the same house where we were born and where we grew up. My brother-in-law Seed, the husband of my sister, Elizabeth, after he took from each of us written documents that we do not want any of the heirs, broke the old house to the ground and built a new house, in the same spot, and little and dark as the old one.

The demolition of a house can make someone feel like their life is ending.. Someone would die...

There, in that demolished house by my brother-in-law Seed, my grandpa died, the one whose name I have, there my sister Rada died, and my brother Alex, and there my mother died as well.

My father died in the little house next to the house, in a small room between the kitchen and the little iron shack of my brother-in-law.

In the new house, no one died until now, when my brother-in-law Seed died, the one who built it with his money and with his sweat.

What is the point of getting upset or to get sad? In other houses from our village, have died many more people than in our home. In some houses, all the people that were living there have died. Everyone, all the people that were living there... With us, the ones born from Tudor and Dumitra, from Tudor and Maria, and Maria and Radu, our fate was kind.

I consider fate kind first of all with my brother Alex.

Oh dear Alex, my darling, how mom used to call him when she remembered him. He lived only for seven days! He couldn't know either the sweetness of the world or its sadness and bitterness.

My sister Rada had an awful death and, like with any shot in the throat, she struggled a lot. She accomplished word by word the song which says, with justice for some, without justice for others.

My mother died at night. And after a few years, my father died at night as well. I was living far from him and was visiting him only sometimes.

One night, at the beginning of autumn, I suddenly woke up from my sleep. I didn't wake up by a loud noise, but rather by the impression that I was being suffocated by a strong smell of incense. I quickly jumped off the bed, turned on the light, opened the windows, and checked all the rooms to see if something wasn't burning. The smell of burnt incense was persisting. I looked at the watch. It was one am. I left the windows open, and I went back to sleep. I woke up as usual at five am.

I washed, shaved, got dressed, ate breakfast, and at six am I was at the editorial office ready to work. We printed the article I was working on before lunch, about eleven, and I wrote already half of it in the morning, with notes about the newest events. At about nine, my editorial work was almost done.

I left to drink some coffee and to smoke some cigarettes. And there in the coffee shop, after half an hour, the reporter Savu and my brother Stefan found me.

My brother was looking for me to bring me the news that our mother has died overnight. I bought everything for a proper funeral. I rented a car and went to the village with my brother Stefan for our mother's funeral.

After five or six hours, when we arrived there, my sister Elizabeth came our way with a pale face, from all the crying. I asked her:

"-When did she die?

-Last night, at one am. She replied.

-How come you know that she died at exactly one am and not later or earlier?

-Because exactly then when she was dying, the one am train was passing by, and then I looked at the clock and it was one am sharp."

I entered the house. My mother was sleeping laid in the bed, on the bed that she had been true sleeping for years next to my father. Her face was yellow, like wax. Her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were tired, and her lips... Her lips were white, white like paper.

She was wearing new clothes, a new black skirt, new black socks, new black shoes, all new, for her who she walked bare feet her entire life! They enclosed her hands over her chest and they were also yellow. The room smelled of incense and melted wax, and the smoke was thickening the air, making it hard to breathe.

An overlong disease weakened my mother's body, and unfortunately, it passed on to me as well. I do not doubt that I will die from it too.

Under our mother's closed eyelids, there were her beautiful eyes, with which she cried so many times, rivers of tears, during her long life. Eyes, with which she saw me growing up and then leaving the house and the poor village between the hills.

"You, ", she told me not once, "you were so sick when you were a kid. You were one year old and then you were two years old and your feet couldn't hold you. Because I didn't have the strength anymore to carry you in my arms, I would carry you on my shoulder. And I carried you on my shoulder for so long until my skin got thicker there..."

I have the urge to bend over there and to unbutton her clothes, to her neck and chest, and to unbutton her white snow shirt, the shirt that she never wore, as she kept it for her to wear when she was dead; and to touch her shoulders, to caress the shoulder with which she carried me. But I stay still. I am ashamed of the people around me and I remain still. The relatives and acquaintances from our village and the other neighboring villages came to mourn my mother and to take part at her funeral, they look at her dead body, and after each of them get enough, they threw a look at me too. My sister Elizabeth says:

"-We were both sleeping here in this room, with the light on, because you know that mother was always afraid of the darkness and she was always sleeping with her lamp on. She woke up, she called and asked me to light her candle.

-What came to you with the candle?

-I am dying. I am feeling that from one moment to another I will die.

I made the lamp light brighter; I went outside, then crossed the road to my sister Leana, to call her to come to us, as our mother is dying. I came back, lit the candle, and put it in my mother's hand. My sister Leana came too.

-Go, Mother said to her, go home and wake up your husband and send him to the priest to come and give me one last Eucharist, and then to go to the main office to make a call to the boys, to come home so I can see them, as I haven't seen them in a long time. To tell the boys to hurry, maybe I will get the chance to see them before I die.

I was one am and exactly then the one am train passed by shaking the windows. Mother was sitting over the wall with the candle in her hand. She screamed loud one time, a scream I have never heard before, and then blood came out from her mouth. After a few minutes, she was cold."

How quickly people die, and how quickly they get cold!...