“Aren’t my friends wonderful! Well, how can you not love them and not want to be with them, even in the next life!”

Mourning Constanța[1],

I too would like to express my sorrow at the loss of my best friend. I found out late as I was out of town. I tried to get more news by phone, but I got the same answer: “You have the wrong number!” Anyway, it was too late, he was dead. I really wanted to catch him alive, maybe he would have something to tell me. And I would have had something else to say to him, but “His words: We’ll meet again, life doesn’t end here.”

Valeriu told me, when I asked him about a “coat”, that he had sent it ahead, that he had given it away, so that he could find it on the other side. Ion told me that he was leaving and waiting for me, as if he were leaving Bucharest for Iași. Death, he said, was nothing but a train that would take us from here to the other side. Aren’t my friends wonderful? How can you not love them and want to be with them, even in the next life? I’m going last. I worked out the order of departure a long time ago. God takes those who are most ready to die first, those whom he considers most fit for heaven. I have a few years left, I have to “atone”, His will be done.

I will also go to Cernica to pray at his tomb and tell him what I never got to tell him.

You are alone, but not alone. You have your daughter to comfort you. You also have the presence of Ionel, who for more than twenty years has left you enough memories to never forget him. He was a good soul who tried to live an exemplary life among people and gave everything to those close to him. That is how I knew him, and that is how I believe he behaved until the end of his life. May he be remembered for his lightness and his memory.

(Marin Naidim, Râmniceni, 10.04.1986 – Nicolae Trifoiu, Pagini literare. Memories and evocations, Napoca Star Publishing House, Cluj, 2001, pp. 180-181)

[1] Marin Naidim, like Nicolae Trifoiu, were not informed in advance of Ioan Ianolide’s death, so they did not attend his funeral. As a result, Marin sends this letter of sympathy to Mrs. Constanța Ianolide, Ioan’s wife.