When I was 31, I moved into the same house as my 91-year-old grandmother. I found her living alone, almost completely silent. Days—sometimes weeks—would pass without her speaking to anyone, and in time she had lost the ease of articulating words. I felt guilty, knowing I could have visited her more often. She still had so much to share. Gradually, her voice returned. With the slightest prompt from me, she began recounting her life. A single question was enough to open a window into her past: her childhood dream of becoming a teacher, the story of how my grandfather courted her before their marriage at sixteen, their forced displacement north of the Danube after the loss of the Cadrilater, the years of wandering wherever the authorities sent them, the coincidence of transiting Ploiești by train at the very moment of the bombing, and the way she and her mother hid in bomb craters while clutching their children, trusting that no new bomb would fall in the same spot. She told of drying diapers against her stomach under her clothes, or unraveling her doilies to knit socks. These were moments men in the family were not aware of—my grandfather being at the war front, my great-grandfather roaming the country in search of food.

I wanted to record her stories on film, to create an interview where personal and collective history would intertwine. But under the illusion that she would always be there, I postponed it until it was too late. She gave me ten generous years, and I let them slip by.

After her death, I photographed her house. The images became a kind of portrait in the absence of the sitter, a reflection of a life shaped by necessity and resilience: someone who earned her bread through her own labor, who had learned frugality without becoming miserly, who recycled not to save the planet but out of lived necessity, who carried herself with dignity, held on to her own destiny, placed family above all else, and never indulged in self-pity. She was always prepared for hardship, but also able to embrace joy with intensity—and, above all, to survive.