Remembrances: Tributes to Tita Cory

One of the few consolations afforded by grief has something to do with the nature of grace: the more heartfelt and powerful the sense of bereavement, the more sublime the remembrance.

Inasmuch as we all deal with a profound sense of loss, we are also blessed by a profuse outpouring of paeans, each more stirring than the last. It is remarkable how many people share the same story. Before the death of Tita Cory, there was largely apathy, a miasma of unfeeling that mirrored the detachment and underlying despair of the contemporary Filipino. After her death? Sweet melancholy, but not, with apologies to The Smashing Pumpkins, a sense of infinite sadness. Rather, there seems to be a poignant, gentle sense of hope stirring in the wind.

Here are some of the best tributes I have come across. Many thanks to Vince Sales and the lovely people at Techie.com for getting me started.

Tributes penned:

"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."

by Jessica Zafra, Tita Cory

"I wondered, like someone who had come back to where he started and saw the place for the first time: Maybe colors are there to unite us more than separate us. Maybe red is just the blood that pulses in the veins in love and war. Maybe yellow is just the pages of a letter from a loved one that magically bring him back to life. Maybe blue is just the sky, however cloudy, when looked at through the bars of a prison cell. Maybe green is just fields promising plenitude. Maybe black is just the tangle of our fate, the twists and turns of our life, as we grope our way forward. Maybe white is just the grace to push on, amid the darkness.

I wondered with the wisdom of innocence and the naivete of age: Maybe we’re divided only into good people and bad people. How people are so, or become so, I’ll leave others to divine. Maybe they are just born that way, maybe like scorpions they sting because it is in their nature to sting. Or maybe they are made that way, as much by the circumstances that mold their character as their character that molds their circumstances. But bad people are there; we know that only too well. Just as well, good people are there too; we know that even more so.

We know the latter because we had someone walk with us who was so. Someone who was so disinterested in power she accepted it gravely as a matter of duty and gave it up gracefully as a matter of trust, for which she remains an awesome force even in death. Someone who, while she lived, showered not very small kindnesses on others in their hour of need or bereavement, having known bereavement herself and the comfort of empathy as much as the empathy of comfort, for which she continues to live with us even in death. Someone who proved once before as Joan of Arc and who will prove once again like El Cid the terrifying and wondrously prophetic vision of her faith: The exalted shall be humbled and the humble exalted.

In life and in death, Cory has been—pardon my French—one damn good person."

by Conrado de Quiros, One good person

And tributes sung:



Have a blessed weekend. Please remember Tita Cory and the Filipino people in your prayers.

Photo Credits:

Picture of Tita Cory comes courtesy of The EQualizer Post.