Crimson Heavens

I don’t think I ever had a chance to meet you in person and yet you were someone I had idolized all my life. You were, for me, an epitome of a perfect woman—beauty, brain, elegance, loyalty, humility—you had it all.

My earliest memory of you was my Grandpapa mentioning your name when I was 3. I was a child, true, but I felt something important was going to happen…People all around me started acting strange…And I remember having lots of visitors in our house that day, who, for me, bore the same expression…

I still have the picture of me days after that, wearing that oversized yellow shirt, both hands up in the air, proudly flashin’ that famous “L” sign and shouting your name on the streets. I started idolizing you then Tita Cory, because everybody said you are a good person—and I, being a child that I was, liked good people.

We lived a few streets away from Camp Aguinaldo, Tita Cory, and also not so far from Camp Crame. And yes, my family were also active participants in the EDSA  Revolution. The people supported you, probably not because they knew what you are capable of, but because they really want to get rid of the dictator. You became the president, and probably, you did lack the experience—you were never a politician after all. I bet, all you wanted to do is serve the Filipino people.

And you did serve the Filipino people, the only way you knew how—-you tried your hardest to take care of us, like a mother would take care of her children. You not only tried to heal the country’s economy (of which a lot had said you had tried yet failed), but also tried, if not enrich, but retain, the values that we, God-fearing, Filipino people was known for. For me, even if you were not able to heal the country completely as the Filipino people expected you to do, you did your best to fulfill the promises you made—especially the one that I think was the most important to all back then—You did not usurp your power and kept it all to yourself like the tyrant you replaced.

The Filipino people loved you for that, Tita Cory. And as a proof of that love, the whole country mourned for your death, thousands poured in to pay their respects, and tens and thousands more walked in the pouring rain to accompany you to your final resting place.

Thank you Tita Cory. Thank you, especially,  for accepting the burden you were entrusted with, even if you didn’t have to. You could have lived a quiet life with your family. That would have been the choice of a lot of women who would have gone through what you had experienced would have preferred. Instead, you had chosen a different path, and because of this unselfish act of total self-sacrifice, I assure you, you made a lot of difference.