Gone

I was going to write a bitchy column about the SONA. But that can wait for now.

***

You know how you never really realize someone was there, protecting you, protecting your freedoms, until they're gone?

And when they're gone, then you realize how big they were, how important, how much you needed them.

And now you're alone.

That's how I feel about Cory.

***

I was barely around for her presidency. My family left the Philippines after EDSA 1. When we came back, it was almost 1992. But I have seen her since, speaking when the nation needed her to, but always retreating to her private life after, so unlike the attention-hungry toads that populate the government now.

She may not have been a brilliant economist or a whipcracker of men, but she was an example of restraint, of selfless service, an example none of our presidents since her has taken.

And now she's gone.

***

Over the years, I've read the criticism of her, that she didn't do enough economically, that her CARP was half-baked, that her family's own lands got away from under it. And maybe this is all valid.

But I think, first and foremost, Cory had it in her head to restore democracy and democratic institutions to this country, so that the next president could get on with the economic stuff. And that was a big job, especially after the shambles twenty years of dictatorship had left the country in.

And she did it.

***

And always, always, people say: she stepped down. She gave up her power, and did not cling to it like it would kill her to give up, like so many of our self-serving politicians now.

Power, I think, is like water. When you cup it gently in your hands, you are able to hold it for a while. But when you try to grab it, grasp it, it slips through your fingers and flows away.

To get power, I think, you must not want it in the first place. You must hold it gently and, when you pass it along to the next person, it doesn't hurt to do so. But when you greedily grasp for it, you will spend your whole life fighting to hold on to it, and you'll lose it anyway.

***

Cory held her power gently like water. And when she gave it away, she gave it with gladness in her heart. But she never really lost it, not the power she had in our hearts. The power she showed us we all had.

***

I joke that one of the few times I cry is when political leaders die. It's not some macho thing; my whole family, girls and boys, was not brought up to be particularly emotional or affectionate, so crying isn't really something we do. But I really do cry sometimes when leaders die. I cried when John Paul II died, and I cried when Yasser Arafat died.

I cry because they stand for something and are now gone. I cry for the orphaned people they leave behind who have no leaders to look up to.

And I cried yesterday, watching that mass on the last morning. For all of the above reasons and more. But I don't think I've cried like that in a while.

***

I'm not a religious person. I'm not even a Catholic. But I sat through a beautiful homily during that mass by a Father Arevalo, scribbled on pieces of yellow pad paper, I noted, amused.

And he said something I will not forget. He said, "There is darkness in our land because you are gone. But we know, we have enough light within us because you have shared with us your fire."

***

So light the fire. And never forget what she gave us.

Because she is gone.

Because now we are alone. And we only have ourselves, each other, to find our way through the darkness now.