Siftings
Tribute to a housewife
In our lifetime, we as a people have been given the rare opportunity to file past the biers of two exceptionally noble couple in order to honor them as heroes: the husband assassinated for wanting to serve his people and the wife who took up his cause and became the president that he could have been had he lived. Two people who loved each other and loved their country, but were also singled out for greatness: he whose early brilliance challenged the strongman’s plans for everlasting power; and she, a devoted housewife whose only dream was to support her husband’s dream to serve his country and his people.
She seemed ordinary enough. Except that she was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. Her uniqueness came to her later when, in a time of suffering and oppression, she answered the call to freedom that her husband had sounded but had to leave, cruelly cut down in his prime, leading a fractious nation with simple courage, humility, and grace, her cheerful smile proclaiming the purity of her heart and min and soul..
She applauded her husband’s cry, his words made true by his death:”The Filipino is worth dying for.” And after his death, she never let go of that cry, believing in his words and adding her own:”I thank God I am a Filipino.” These, surely, are words that can issue only from the mouths of heroes, true Filipino heroes.
What times of greatness and glory this nation could have enjoyed under Ninoy only God would know. That August of 1983 in Sto. Domingo Church when I filed past his coffin and saw him smiling, his suit turned deep brown from the blood of his head wound–it was only a mere 3 heartbeats as I stood there saying a quick prayer while the tears rushed down my cheeks to see Freedom lying dead before me–I could not foresee that his death would lead to the glory of EDSA I. Outside the church, I heard the words of common people from the provinces, some coming from as far as the Ilocos, the strongman’s bulwark of power, their tears and prayers impressing me with the sadness of hopelessness. When I asked a white-haired lola sitting on the curb why she and her husband had come to this church to pay their respects to Ninoy, she replied: “Gusto namin siyang igalang, gusto naming makiisa sa kanyang laban. Kasi namatay siya para sa atin, isang senador. Kung siyang senador ay pinaslang ng walang awa, paano kaya tayo tatratuhin, tayong mga ordinaryong tao lamang?”
These words I would remember when, in the midst of People Power I of February 1986, I found myself outside Channel 4, separated from my friends and husband, dodging bullets from the encounter between government and rebel forces that left one unfortunate soldier dead, hanging by a cable at the top of ABS-CBN’s transmission tower, victim of the rebel forces’ cleansing fire. This, I reminded myself, is what Ninoy’s death has led to, this cleansing process that must now consume this nation..
When the housewife burst upon the world in her glory days, carrying out her husband’s mission to save this nation, the world fell in love with her instantly. She became the darling of media, this smiling widow who toppled a dictator in an almost bloodless revolution — yes, revolution, because there was a change in the political system after EDSA, from a dictatorship to the democracy that the dictator had crushed with his proclamations.
But she was only human, just a housewife. And she never allowed us to forget that. Her instincts as housewife required that she set her government’s house in order. Everything in this house that had been broken must be replaced; all things that had been lost must be found and restored. And those that could no longer work to the best advantage of all must be rebuilt, modified, strengthened, as set forth in what has come to be called the Cory Constitution. This last may be flawed, but it was the best that the Constitutional Convention could come up with at the time, given the circumstances and the revolutionary nature of her government.
I have been crying for days after her death: tears of contrition, maybe, not only for the loss of our icon of democracy but because I once lost faith in her. She was too slow to grasp at chances to make bold moves and really make the difference in our national life. All those coup attempts happened bacause she was too shortsighted, I thought. She lacked the quickness that died with her husband. She began to inspire distrust and resentment, especially after the deaths of those farmers outside the gates of Malacañang. Her fiercest critic, the columnist Ninez Cacho-Olivares, in bitter disappointment labeled her the “Palengkera of Malacañang.” That was hitting below the belt, of course.
But Cory was consumed with only one thing: the restoration of the democratic institutions and processes that make for a representative form of government. And you know what? She was right and her critics were wrong. Wrong, along with those who dismissed her presidency as mere housekeeping. You see, this housewife worked hard to put the Philippine House back on its feet again. And she succeeded.
When she stepped down from her presidency, she was showing her successor that this was how it should be: after one’s work is done, one must give way for others to serve the country in their own way. This is what service means: a chain of commands and processes aimed at building a progressive nation and people.
We are running short of heroes for our coming of age generations. Who will be there for them to emulate? Kris? Noynoy? The mantle of greatness has not touched them, so far as I can see.
These ceremonies and obsequies for the departed are, in truth, really for the consolation of the bereaved. The dead will not be there to witness all these, except perhaps in spirit. But we, the bereaved, will offer up our prayers and eulogies, our tears bathing our faces while our hearts pour forth their grief in the fullness of our sense of loss.
Only in the Philippines did People Power arise and spread to the rest of the world. Only in the Philippines can the world witness the rise of a husband and Wife who between them brought back Democracy into this country and are now heroes: the husband Ninoy a certified martyr, the wife Cory a saint-on-earth. Now maybe we can say: Hail, Tita Cory, please pray for our nation. Amen.