Story read to us during elem
Good day, I'm not part of your beautiful community. I am here just looking for help as I’m trying to identify a story we read in a Filipino textbook around Grade 6 (roughly 2011–2012 in the Philippines).
I’m not sure if the story was originally Filipino or just translated into Filipino.
What I remember:
There was a very poor family with several children (I think 3).
They lived beside or near another family that was wealthier or at least capable of surviving comfortably.
A cold season / winter / famine-like situation happened (not fully sure about this detail).
One of the poor family’s children became sick and eventually died due to hunger/sickness.
The poor family couldn’t even afford a proper wake/funeral.
The richer neighboring family helped them by providing food/support/place for the wake.
Because the poor family was starving, this became one of the few times they were able to eat proper food.
Then later, another child in the poor family became sick again, and one sibling said something shocking along the lines of:
“Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll be able to eat again because [sibling] is dying.”
That ending stayed with me for years.
I’ve been trying to find this story for a long time. It may have been:
a translated Russian/European story,
a social realist short story,
or something included only in Philippine school textbooks/workbooks.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?