Mariana was worried as soon as her husband Vasile was late. A minibus driver for an oil company near the town of Alexandra, an hour from Bucharest, he had been sent to bring an engineer home on December 23rd - just as fighting began in what would become the 1989 Christmas revolution.
When he failed to show up on Christmas Eve, Mariana took action. Pregnant with their son, she drove with her father-in-law to the capital. At Valile's workplace she was told that his s red minibus was seen abandoned in a western suburb.
She found the minibus riddled with bullets. He husband was inside. "He was still there, behind the wheel, he had many bullets in him. His body had been there for two days."
Vasile had driven by mistake through an improvised checkpoint at a nearby army barracks - one of many of the 1,115 victims of the revolution shot by mistake.
"We were trying to get his body out. People came around and started shouting that he was a terrorist - they were shouting `terrorist, terrorist!' . . . We got his body out and just put it in the trunk of our car and took him home with us."
The feeling of euphoria engulfing those around her as Romania overthrew its communist regime made her pain and loss harder to bear.
"It was an ecstasy that we were getting rid of that system, but for me it was very, very hard, especially as I was pregnant. I was in shock," she said.
Ten years later Mariana (29) went yesterday with her 10-year-old son, Antonio, to watch tanks again on the streets - this time not to fight, but as part of commemorations marking the day the regime was overthrown.
In contrast to the hysterical joy of a decade ago, the mood was sombre among the little crowds clustered around the city's plaques and monuments. The anniversary is celebrated amid a national feeling of disillusionment in a country still mired in corruption and poverty.
"I don't know if the efforts of those who died were worthwhile," says Mariana. "My hopes were deceived."
Mariana runs a shop and is a volunteer with the December 21 Association, which helps victims and their families and is named after the first day of the killings.
Its vice president is Mr Constantin Aferaritei. "You cannot ask the families of those who died, `Was it worth it?"' he says, from the association's office - unheated because the state grant is so meagre. "It was not a business transaction like saying, `I trade the life of my son or daughter for a new system'. What they lost is irreversible and it marks them."
But he remains an optimist. "You know, the hardest thing to change is not the economics - the hardest thing is to change is the mentality of the people. We had 50 years of the worst system in Eastern Europe. We have to do a lot of catching up."