General Admission
The day we all died
By Al S. Mendoza
ON August 5, I woke up early. Early was about 5:30 a.m.
This day was big day both for me and Sol F. Juvida, a fellow writer-journalist.
Turns out for millions of Filipinos, too.
Hindi kami nag-iisa.
Yes, you guessed it right. This day was the final journey of Cory. She was to traverse her final street of no return, after breathing her last on August 1: The day we all died.
Not just one street, one avenue, one boulevard, but several roads and forks.
After all, this was a heroine we were going to lay to her final resting place.
This was even a queen we were going to pay our last respects to one last time; one, who, in most likelihood I must say, would be a shoo-in for sainthood.
And why not?
Cory had lived a life of peace for humankind, had offered a life of suffering to heal an ever fractious nation, and had sacrificed body and soul in the service of God the Father.
As in Padre Pio’s case, so with Cory.
As the immortal line goes, “Padre Pio is not a man of prayer, he is prayer himself.”
All her life, Cory was a person of prayer.
Joey Romasanta, one of the most trusted allies in the innermost circle of Cory’s family, said: “Everyday during our presidential campaign in the 1986 snap election, we prayed the rosary.”
On board a van, the day’s campaign sortie over and darkness had set in, “Ma’am Cory would switch off the van’s light,” said Joey. “Next, she would request us to bring out our rosaries and we would all pray the rosary.”
Joey said Cory had been that way long before the ’86 snap polls were held.
To Cory, the rosary was the embodiment of everything that she was: Love for others is love for God.
She used it to storm the gates of heaven to implore for justice when Ninoy her husband was gunned down by soldiers at the airport in 1983.
She used it to silence the cannons of a dictatorship bent on crushing a peaceful rebellion that was the Edsa Revolt in 1986.
She used it to topple Marcos’ strongman rule lasting 14 cruel years of abuse of power and the oppression of the people and the desecration of human rights from 1972.
She used it to quell seven coups de tat, the last time in 1989 when the enemies of democracy had come tantalizingly close to tearing down the doors of Malacañang.
All of those – and many, many more-were the reasons Sol J and I were to rise from bed early on this particular day.
“We have two options,” I told Sol J. “We hole up ourselves on the fifth floor of Benny’s house-building in Magallanes, Makati, or stay put at Roxas Blvd., Manila.”
We agreed on the second option: Roxas Boulevard, corner Quirino Avenue, near the CCP Complex on Vito Cruz.
After coffee and pan de sal, off we went.
At minutes past 9, we got there.
It was raining hard but who was afraid of pneumonia?
Cory was our vaccine shot.
We waited and waited and waited. While seemingly waiting in eternity, it rained mostly, soaking many wet.
No plaints.
Cory was our cold specialist.
You wait for someone who had loved you all her life, why complain at all?
So, if you ask me, those four honors guards deserve more for standing almost nine hours at attention during the Cory Cortege.
A one-star each on their shoulders wouldn’t even suffice.
Talk about gratitude to the one who had loved you in her entire lifetime-those Fab Four certainly showed it.
At five minutes before 1 p.m., the truck bearing the Cory Coffin was right there in front of Sol J and me, maybe just about eight feet away from us. The truck gliding magically, majestically, like that famed swan in the lake.
I saluted heroically to a most gallant bastion of democracy as I stood in abject attention.
All this time, my heart kept saying: “Goodbye, Cory. Your thoughts, your example, but mostly, your love for me, I will never forget.”
That was the least I could do at that moment of bristling rapture and sublime electric.
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