You don't die when you die.
You die when you pass a cherry tree and don't see its blossom. When your mouth, once full of love, has twisted, multiplying malice with pleasure and weaving deceit.
You die when you open the window and chase children away from the street. You are tired and want to rest. And you die when your neighbor's joy gets into your eyes and pricks your heart. When your life has become a metronomic drudgery between waking and sleeping, between a sunrise and a sunset, both equally gray.
You die when you no longer long for anything. When you no longer wake up at night thinking about your first high school love, wondering if they're doing well, if they've made it in life? When loving seems too costly and far too late.
You die when no one scolds you anymore. You haven't become the god you claim to be, it's just that others have given up waiting for you, their love has grown tired. No one contradicts you now, because no one talks to the dead. When you walk through the world, behind you, like a disturbing miasma, only fear remains. And you, dead one, are convinced that fear is respect.
When you believe you have become someone, anyone, you die. You are a grain of sand on the sandal of the Barefoot One, that's all. A grain of sand that was allowed to love. And failed.
You die when you no longer have any doubt.
But above all, you die irrevocably when you no longer speak with the Resurrected One, punishing Him for your powerlessness. Because you did not love in the time of love, you did not show mercy in the time of mercy, you did not laugh when there was laughter and you did not shed tears beside the pain of others.
Then you are dead.
Fr. Crin-Triandafil Theodorescu