Radu Gabrea giving me explanations

Radu Gabrea has died.

My friend who was always smiling and went from being to not being.

Jokes have only helped us during our life, he had a booming laughter, I would talk to him about something, he would stare at me seriously for a few moments and then burst out laughing - I was never able to hide my humor from him, not even when he had troubles.

At such moments, we were one and the same - one part has stayed behind, while, strangely, the other half is now in the afterlife.

He was a collaborator of the BURSA newspaper; of course, he did many other things, he made movies, he built up actors, he made the law of Cinema, he built up directors, he wrote a book and worked on a book that someone else wrote about him, at any rate, he was constantly doing something, but he also worked with the Bursa newspaper and we also had a small business together, in film editing.

When he pitched it to me, about fifteen years ago, he was about the age I am now, and I checked him out like you do with a horse before buying it - he had good teeth, but he was fat and wheezing, he was walking in a cane, with difficulty, and I told myself he only had about two years to live, and so I asked him "But what if you die?!", and he told me "I won't".

He was sincere.

And so I invested the money.

For a long time he kept his word, and now, it doesn't matter.

He attended last year's BURSA awards gala together with his wife, actress Victoria Cociaş and being lucky, he won a a trip to Turkey in the raffle, and strangely, he who was always traveling abroad, he was very pleased at winning that trip.

He had lost a lot of weight, but he was the same, he weighed less than me, and now I was the one who had gained weight, wheezing and moving slowly.

That was the last time I saw him.

He won't be going to Turkey.

After I published in BURSA the series of articles called "The meaning of interest in lending", he called me on the phone and proposed making it into a documentary.

We won't be making it.

On a different occasion, I explained to him that we come into the world with the experience of the void that we come from, and therefore, the state of death is not unknown to us.

Now, he is the one explaining it to me.

And I believe him.