“I’m not dead!” he maintains. “Yes, you are!” the courts reply. You’d think the very fact that the guy is standing there, telling you that he is alive, would serve as sufficient evidence that he is, in fact, alive. But this is in Romania, so I’m not surprised that they’d require a bit more strenuous a litmus test. I mean, if every dead guy who insisted he was really alive actually WERE alive, you know?
Constantin Reliu, aged 63, is dead. Officially-speaking. (Wait. If he’s dead, didn’t he stop having birthdays? Is he really 63 then? Wouldn’t he remain the age at which he died? Or should we start saying something like “He would be 63 today if he were alive”?) He got deported from Turkey in January, but when he got back to his home country he learned that he was dead. Damn, it was heartless of the Turks not to tell him! They could’ve warned him, couldn’t they? Reliu filed suit to get the fraudulent death certificate that bears his name voided, but the court ruled against him! How many dead guys must have come forward trying to get their life benefits reinstated, that the courts in Romania have established an official policy of rejecting revenants, even if said revenants show up to testify on their own behalf?
