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I was born in 1980, three years before Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was shot. Six years before EDSA Revolution. Needless to say, I was very young when Corazon C. Aquino came into power and wrested the Presidency from the clutches of the dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos.

 

I was young, but not unaware. At such an age, six to twelve, when Cory was the President, I was as much a political observant as I am now although my eyes were indeed wider in wonderment and my mind was much more of a clean slate rather than the convoluted landscape that it is these days. I always knew what was happening, whether it was through our television or from the mouths of my parents and older relatives and friends who never seemed to stop talking about what happened prior to Martial Law and what was happening then. I knew what was happening, maybe through second hand or third hand information, but I understood.

 

The death of President Cory didn’t hit me like the whirlwind of sadness that has enveloped most others who grieve his death. To me it was slower, and as I am writing this, watching Cory being laid down to rest, it’s starting to feel like a relative of mine died, one who I was close with once, but never got the chance to say hi again to. And now, didn’t really have the chance to say goodbye to.

 

I can recall bits and pieces of her Presidency. It wasn’t perfect, by no means was it even close to perfect. The Presidency is a very difficult position to have and one can imagine how much harder it was on Cory being who she was, a homemaker. She was a quiet person, and now, she was adopting millions of children. Looking back, after the predicament the Filipino people was in during the Marcos era, when human rights were blatantly trampled upon, when small liberties were denied and a misstep was met by an iron fist, who better to have as our leader than a loving homemaker?

 

I was a child then but so were the rest of the Filipinos who felt the grip of the dictator around their throats. We were all children, each one of us. We all were looking for direction but before that, what we really needed was comfort, the feeling that we are being treated like the humans that we are and not the pawns or slaves that were our roles in the past twenty years. That, more than anything else was important as it allowed for us not only to be lead to a new direction, but for us to stand up again on our very own two feet and realize our humanity once again.

 

I can recall bits and pieces of her Presidency. It wasn’t perfect but her love for the country was. Her love for the Filipino people was as genuine as it can possibly get, truly a magnificent thing considering the arena she was in with the rest of the players in it speaking half truths with their half hearts.

 

I have experienced five presidents in my lifetime, Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Arroyo. Of the five it was only during Cory’s time did I feel safe. There were seven coup attempts during her time yet it was only during her reign when I didn’t feel like the government was out to get us. Even with all the mistakes and troubles that dotted her time in office, she was the only President who I felt always, always, always had the good of the Filipino people in mind. With her, one never thought about any ulterior motives that she might have when going into deals. When she spoke, you always expected and received the truth right from her mouth. Nothing was contrived. Everything was genuine. That’s how I felt about her.

 

Cory was everyone’s mother even after her reign. Perhaps this is why people of my generation who never really experienced the full force of her presidency weep. She cared, she genuinely cared the way our mothers cared for us. We do not remember much of her presidency but we remember her care for us during and after her Presidency. I never thought so much how I felt about how her relationship with my generation was until I read an article by Conrado de Quiros in the Inquirer calling her “the ogre she once slew” that unleashed all the emotions of a child from within me. I hit back, writing De Quiros the most hateful of letters, filled with words that can only come from a defensive child unflinchingly protecting his mother. How the curses flowed out of me like a broken dam speaks volumes of how much painful it was to hear someone describe her in such despicable a term.

 

I met her sometime in 2001 when she was in the Ateneo, giving a speech. I pretended to be a photographer tasked by the school to chronicle her visit and her speech so that I can come close to her and take her pictures. I’m sure I was pretty annoying. I burned two rolls of film on a 15 minute speech. I do not remember much about what she said but I do remember the feeling being around her, being so close to her. She was jovial, welcoming and unassuming. There was no air to her. No yabang. Years after being the President, she was still oblivious to the type of person she was, the power she wielded and still has. I on the other hand spent the time smiling and muttering to myself how lucky I was just to be in her presence.  

 

My generation never really knew her as a President but we knew her as a Leader. We didn’t quite experience her reign but we experienced her power. What we know about her Presidency, we read in our history books and taught to us in class. What we know about her as a Person we learned through her words and actions as she took a stand every single time people needed someone to do the same. We weep not because we lost a President but because we lost a mother… who was also our President.

 

To the President, from my generation, Salamat Po, Nanay.

 

- Francis Maynard S. Maleon