Susana prays before going to sleep while Victor waits for her to finish her ritual. Susana was a housewife all of her life, taking care of the daughter and husband, the garden, and the animals. In her spare time, she was making blankets that she would later sell, making a good amount of money. Victor worked as a blacksmith and as a farmer, but since he was a refugee in Hungary, he also received money supplements from the government. Owning two apartments in the city, they would often rent them, having another source of income. Considered wealthy people because their pension was more significant than the average and because they kept their money in the house, a common practice in Romania, they suffered from a lot of robbery attacks and knife threats.

Susana and Victor sit on the bench in front of their house after Susana cleaned the front yard of leaves, making a fire. Usually, in the afternoons they spend a few hours on the bench watching people and socializing with their neighbors.

The yard of Susana and Victor's house. They keep a few chickens for meat and dogs and a dog to protect the house from thieves. The house does not have running water and the toilet is located in their garden. During the winter, they use a stove with wood to heat the room they are living in, which is used for cooking food too.

Victor sits patiently in the kitchen while Susana is talking to him from the patio. He is used to sitting for long periods of time waiting to feel Susana.

Victor is helped by their niece, Camelia, to dress while Susana is watching sitting on her bed inside their home. Camelia and her family come every weekend from Bistrița (a city 34 km away from the village) to help them with the chores and the garden but also to spend time with them.

Victor is falling asleep after Susana helped him change his clothes and lay down. He lost the sense of time due to his blindness and deafness and he often asks Susana “Is it night again?”.

Susana is resting her head on a walking stick in the yard of her houseafter she was released from the hospital. She was sexually assaulted in an attempted robbery attack on the 30th of June 2019. Susana was in her yard when she was attacked by a Roma man recently released from prison. She was left helpless on the ground, ten meters away from Victor who was waiting for her in the house not knowing what happened. Susana had to get up and call the police and the medical care by herself. She broke several ribs and it took six months to recover from the physical and mental pain.

Susana has her wounds dressed by her neiece, Camelia.

A month after the assault, Susana is washing herself in a basin in the kitchen of her house. Not having running water, she has to heat the water that she brings from the fountain in the yard.

Alexandru, Camelia’s husband, helps Susana get up fron the bed to drink water. Susana’s pain from the broken ribs after the assault forced her to stay in bed for weeks.

Susana is feeling sick and Camelia is lighting a match as part of a religious disenchant for her to feel better. The disenchant consists of a series of prayers while lighting matches that fall into a glass of water. At the end of the ritual, Susana needs to drink from the water three times for her symptoms to go away. Victor is sleeping in the bed next to them.

The village doctor is checking Victor’s blood pressure while Susana and Lazor, a neihbour, are waiting. Victor’s health has declined significantly, water retention from the liver cirrosis and high blood pressure being two of the main concerns.

Susana is burning waste and preparing the yard for Victor’s burial. Victor died on the 8th of October 2019 suffering from liver cirrhosis caused by nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, three months after Susana’s sexual assault. In Romania, the dead family member is kept in the guest room of the house for three days, but Susana wanted to bury Victor on the sixth day after his death because Wednesdays and Fridays are fasting days in the orthodox religion and she wanted to serve food with meat for the guests.

Camelia and Susana are discussing above Victor’s coffin while two neighbors are untying the knots of Victor’s tie, belt, and laces before the funeral ceremony. It is a Romanian superstition - the untying of the knots represents that the widow can continue his or her life, as well as the covering of the mirror in the left corner so that the dead won’t see himself in the mirror and come back. The portrait of their dead daughter, Măricica, is hanging in the center of the photograph.

Three men walking with the crosses following the coffin to the cemetery at Victor’s burial.

Victor’s burial in the Sângeorzul Nou cemetery. The priest is reading the preacher while the neighbors and nephews are helping to position Victor in the grave where his daughter is son-in-law are also buried.

Susana sits on the grave of her husband Victor, her daughter Măricica and her son-in-law Zaharie. On the gravestone are written their birth and death dates, being a common practice for Romanians to build their grave with their birth date long before their death. Victor and Susana had twins, but the boy died a few days after the birth. The daughter, Măricica (born 1948), survived and lived happily together with her parents and husband until 1993 when one night she felt sick and went to the hospital. There, the doctors gave her an injection and she never woke up again, her cause of death remaining a mystery for everyone. No further investigations were taken after her death, Susana believed in spells cast by a neighbor because she found threads under Măricica’s bedsheets. Susana herself practices spells and in Romanian tradition, if a person is not guilty of something, the spell turns back to the maker. Two years after Măricica's sudden death, her husband was found dead in the bathtub of their apartment.