Ninoy could've loved Cory many times over - II

From hereon, one humbly divines how many more times could have Ninoy loved his Cory if he were long alive, and/or the vicissitudes and the tarot cards were dealt out differently.

The 4th time Ninoy could've loved Cory was his perfidious killing on returning home from Boston. She pained not only as her personal ordeal, but also that of national grief over Ninoy's martyrdom, and the people's dirge against a dictator. Perhaps unbelieving the dictator's assurance of safe return that only hastened Ninoy's prophecy that Filipinos were worth dying for, exacerbated her enormous pain.

The fifth time was the aftermath of Ninoy's assassination when the grieving and over-abused nation had to carry on peaceably the "people's power" with candles, flowers, and prayers. Knowing her inadequacy in governance and politics, Cory took on her shoulders - as the widowed "ordinary housewife" - an awesome task. She was a total stranger to lead the oppressed people in reviving democracy that had hardly been breathing.

The sixth time might be the seven coup attempts by renegade soldiers which Cory had to quell with her raw woman's bravery under fire. As sidelight, when a columnist derided her for "hiding under the bed" during the rebel putsches, Cory sued the columnist whose defense was the use of hyperbolic metaphor "hiding under the bed" as mere figure of speech. Though acquitted in the appellate court, the columnist and the publisher both got a sample of Cory's balls in upholding the dignity of the presidential office that had been insulted.

The seventh time was the singular honor in addressing the US Congress in joint session in 1986. Her well-crafted and superbly delivered speech not only reverberated in the cavernous hall of Congress in Washington D.C., but also electrified the ramparts of world capitals. It enshrined Cory as an "icon of democracy" worldwide, and the exemplar of the ideologically-downtrodden nations, like East Timor, Panama, Pakistan, and some African countries.

The 8th time should be the intimately personal and private family matter concerning the then problematic youngest daughter. Not just once, but twice that the family hubris and dignity got dragged across the shameful ordeal. The amorous escapades cluttered the media nationwide for sometime without let-up and, which ignominy may be the paradoxical apex of the family tragedy.

Despite such catastrophe, Ninoy couldn't have helped loving his wife more for bearing in silence, and with dignity, another heavy cross cast on her already suffering shoulder. Cory never flinched or floundered as a grieving mother, yes, but never also did the nation hear from her disowning her then wayward daughter, or utter a word of shaming reprimand. Her love as a mother chose to calm her conscience with prayers. After everything had passed for healing, the time came that the prodigal became repentant. Happily, she has found redemption in the man of her choice.

The 9th time for loving Cory was her staying fast, untempted to get reelected. While her regime wasn't perfect, she restored democracy and its institutions, drew up a Constitution, and maintained honesty and decency in governance. Above all, she made possible the continuity of the line of governance.

Perhaps, the tenth time that Ninoy could've loved Cory was on the dignity of her death. While Cory believed that Filipinos are worth living for, she faced her Maker with poise and equanimity. Though media was all agog on a virtual death watch over a seriously-ailing Cory, she bore it through without a whimper.

In recap, Ninoy could have been subliminally reprising Elizabeth Barrett Browning as the "little Portuguese" in her quaint lovely sonnet "How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…" It gently closes with these verses: "I love thee with the breath/ Smiles, tears, of all my life and, if God choose/ I shall but love thee better after death".

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