After cheating death himself and escaping the rubble, Abdellah Aeet Bihi found his youngest son, 4, alive but trapped after Morocco's earthquake.
The boy was able to talk from under the rubble of their collapsed house.
"I couldn't get to him," Bihi, 39, recalled in their village of Talat Nyacoub, destroyed by the Friday night quake.
On Monday, the body of his son was finally freed, Bihi said, breaking into sobs.
The little one had died near his elder brother, 12. "I saw the elder one, lifeless. I realised that stones had landed on his body."
Bihi said he had been hoping for a peaceful sleep "when the roof fell on top of us". An amputee, he uses a prosthesis on his left arm but lost it during the chaos.
Somehow, with help from neighbours, he was able to extract his 10-year-old daughter and his wife from the debris. His eldest child, 14, also got out.
Along with his two boys, Bihi's parents also died in the quake that killed around 2,900 people.
"My tears haven't dried up. I want them to stop but the pain is stronger than anything." His wife looked at him with silent sadness, and wept.
What remains of the family has taken refuge at the entrance to their remote village in the Atlas mountains near the quake epicentre, south of Marrakesh.
Under olive trees, they share a rug with the family of Latifa Aeet Bizli, 30,
The roof of her house also collapsed in the earthquake, but Bizli was able to save her youngsters, aged 3, 7 and 10, as well as her parents-in-law.
"Luckily we were upstairs. I got hold of my children and was able to get them out through a hole," said Bizli, whose husband was in another village at the time, and also survived.
"I went back while the earth was still shaking to get my parents-in-law out."
With the family outside, she took in the extent of the devastation around her. All the homes were destroyed, including her sister's.
"She died with her husband and her two children. I couldn't do anything for her and am remorseful because of it.
" I still can't accept that they are no longer here.
"Life will never be the same for us," she said, grateful that aid has arrived to help them survive in what was a deprived village.
In a spirit of solidarity after the quake, many Moroccans have stepped in to deliver medicine, food, quilts and mattresses to stricken villages, as some people complained the authorities were slow to act.
Another resident of Talat Nyacoub, Rachida Aeet Malek, feels lucky to be alive after spending six hours in the rubble of her home.
When the quake struck, she was upstairs with her two children, mother and two sisters, one of them pregnant. Only her nephew was downstairs, said Malek, in her 20s. "Three of our neighbours got us out."
Malek was the last to be freed, she said, lying under a tree with her children. Her sisters were hospitalised but she is unhurt, physically.
* The writer is from Agence France-Presse