Tita Cory
President Corazon Aquino is dead, and with her dies the last shreds of civility in our public life. She was a good person. Say what you will about her administration, the illusions dashed and opportunities missed, but she was decent to us. She never mocked us, made fun of our hopes, or knowingly insulted our intelligence. Born to privilege, she never acted the spoiled brat. President Cory defended the Constitution from those who would twist it to their own ends. Here was a woman who rejected the temptation to perpetuate herself in power.
She was a lady, a rarity in this day and age and especially in this political system. She tried. We miss her like a limb. In mourning for Tita Cory we’re really mourning for ourselves and what could’ve been.
*****
We knew it was going to happen and we thought we were prepared until we heard the news.
Bert said, “I’m glad I’m not on Zoloft now so I can cry for Tita Cory.”
Mike heard the news on the BBC. “That’s so sad,” he thought, and continued channel-surfing. When he got to Channel 2, Wowowee was on. The dancers came out shaking booty, and they were all dressed in yellow. Mike burst into tears.
The text messages were waiting for me when I got up. I went to the mall to buy a cake for my friend’s dinner, then I was having a very late lunch when the maintenance guys at Rockwell started tying yellow ribbons around the pillars. Goddammit I thought, I’m going to need that brazo de mercedes. It was the right color. We’re never going to retire that Tony Orlando and Dawn song, are we? Don’t care for Coldplay, but they have a song called Yellow. . .
Ernie recalled how he and Bert had attended the second Edsa Revolution in 2001. They had to see what was going on and Edsa was clogged so they walked from Makati to Robinson’s Galleria. When they got there, there were so many people that they still couldn’t see what was going on.
So they looked for a TV inside Galleria and watched the revolution from there.
On the trek back to Makati Ernie and Bert started arguing about poverty. The argument became so heated that Bert ended up throwing Ernie out of the house. Later they realized whom they’d made president by walking to Edsa. That’s probably why they fought.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 1st, 2009 at 13:40
too many deaths…
August 1st, 2009 at 13:44
Just spent lunch with some of my family members who talked about how Cory did nothing, how the media is over-covering her death, and how Teddy Locsin’s sobbing on ANC was “OA”. These were the same people who, while watching endless coverage of Michael Jackson’s death on CNN, kept talking about how Jacko was misunderstood and that he really wasn’t a pedophile.
I can’t believe I share DNA with these people.
August 1st, 2009 at 14:10
i can’t believe we actually got it right with her.
August 1st, 2009 at 15:00
…In mourning for Tita Cory we’re really mourning for ourselves and what could’ve been…
Very well said.
August 1st, 2009 at 15:10
I saw the news this morning. I was calm but very sad. Then they replayed her great speech in the US Congress, tears unknowingly flowed. I am sure I was grieving for the loss of someone extremely rare in modern Philippine history, an honest President. Perhaps more so, I was grieving for what have become of our country. Bruce Springsteen sang “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worst.”
Then I came across the blog of a rich fashionista, a most clueless gadfly. She was crowing that she predicted the death of Cory. But she can’t write more as she had to shower. WTF! How tough is it to predict the death of a terminally ill person? So what if she called it right? A sad historical passing trumped by her clairvoyance and her need to shower? WTF!
Lani Mercado appointed to SMC. Caparas anointed a national artist. GMA plotting for parliamentary form of government.
No more dreams, I am suffering a full-blown nightmare.
August 1st, 2009 at 16:19
Definitely agree with comment #1, too many deaths in a very short time. Aquino indeed was a genuinely kind person.
August 1st, 2009 at 17:58
…’twas the first thing i heard this morning…and well, right there in be, cried. until now, i don’t know why…hehe..
August 1st, 2009 at 22:56
Thank you for the Tita Cory tribute. One of the best I’ve read.
August 1st, 2009 at 22:58
Sorry, I really have to get this off my chest.
It’s political, but nothing to do with Cory.
It’s about Imelda and her jewelry collection. I can understand why some political parties are trying their damnedest to ‘get back’ at Imelda by getting her jewelry collection and using it for the benefit of ‘the people.’ I just wish they were more creative.
Given:
Imelda Marcos is one of the most -if not ‘the’ most- popular First Lady on Earth.
Wouldn’t it be grand if all 3 of her jewelry collections, her shoe collection, and maybe even Rembrandts (if she still has them) as well- were put in some kind of museum, charge visitors for admission and use the proceeds to benefit the poor? The items in that museum would be a worldwide colossal tourist draw if you think about it…
It’s three birds with one stone
…she wins because the government doesn’t get it
…the poor people benefit from the proceeds
…it will increase tourism in the country
The people here have become so vindictive that they’ve lost (never developed?) a sense of creative compromise…
August 2nd, 2009 at 00:32
I don’t know if it’s just me,but I couldn’t help but notice that strange branch in the photo. Look closely above the center and you might see a branch,at an almost perfect 45 degrees angle. I’ve never seen anything like that. Yes,it’s a very tearful day. Oh,well,that’s cancer. No one escapes,especially people above 60. People who expected Cory to perform a miraculous job as an inexperienced transition president must be dreaming. Even Ninoy Aquino himself said that the next leader after Marcos will have it very difficult. Cory took it all,did the best she could (it was actually a great leadership in a turbulent time) and ensured that freedom is restored promptly. She was grace,honor and decency personified.
August 3rd, 2009 at 04:35
probably the most loved president in our history.
a modern hero. she will be missed.
August 4th, 2009 at 00:52
This might sound superficial but my fondest memories of former President Aquino was during her presidency. It was this time when the Aquino family hear mass at Sto. Domingo Church every year for former Sen. Ninoy Aquino during his death anniversary. The former president would use the Angelicum School grounds as a helipad. Of course for security reasons, we won’t have classes that day, to the envy of my cousins who studied in Lourdes School and St. Theresa’s.
Also, in 1986, I remember being dragged to EDSA by my dad. He made me walk from Cubao to Greenhills and I was on the verge of throwing a fit when I saw and heard people chanting “Cory! Cory!” with matching “L” sign. That’s when I realized how significant former president Aquino was (and is).
May her soul rest in peace and I pray her death be the start of a better change for us Filipino and for our country.
August 4th, 2009 at 14:59
I still can’t believe that she already passed away. She’s such a big inspiration to everyone, myself included.
I remember last Saturday, the day President Cory died, at around 4PM I took a taxi to Serendra. The driver kept on telling me a series of his what-ifs, what if Arroyo passed away, would people also flock to EDSA and so and so. I find our conversation quite weird, so I kept on referring to the weather (it was raining heavily) instead. Only at around 7PM that night that I knew about Mrs. Aquino’s passing, through a friend checking out his Facebook site on his Blackberry. I was crestfallen.
Every time I see the news on her death, somehow everything feels and looks dreamy, none of these seem real.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:26
I read this somewhere in the past few days… Democracy is like oxygen. You take it for granted if it’s there. If it’s not, you choke. To all those people who have been denigrating Cory’s administration, you have such short memories. Her death has given me a teaching moment with my daughters. I told them how it was like during martial law days, when as a UP student in Diliman, the sight of Military Police on campus was commonplace, they with their ubiquitous walkie-talkies. How there was a curfew and how we all had to be home before 12 midnight lest we be hauled off to the stockade. How the newspapers were so boring, mouthing off censored news day after day after day. If only for the democracy that we enjoy right now, we Filipinos owe Cory big time. Sure, I know what some pilosopos have been saying, you cannot eat democracy. They fail to take into account that with democracy, we are better able to seek solutions to the problems in our society, able to move about and speak without the barrel of the gun pointed to our head….. though with the spate of killings on journalists in recent years, freedom of speech seems to be in peril again.