Being away from the Philippines does not only mean I am missing my family and good friends. I am missing each and every good and bad news I used to get each day on the daily news which was aired on TV, radio and those published on the newspaper.Thanks to Facebook, I get updates of what's happening in the Philippines all the way from Thailand. A week before the big news hit the world, I saw a post on my Facebook wall about how the younger generation don't know Cory Aquino.
And it puzzled me...is she dying?
I searched for some TV feed online, and I am lucky to find a great site which posts a lot of my favorite 'ka-pamilya' programs in the Philippines. He's a kababayan based abroad who does not get tired posting tv shows back home. I love this guy, and just by watching these shows feels like home.
I learned from TV Patrol news that Cory Aquino is at stage 4 cancer.
Fast forward 7 days, and I saw the breaking news on Thai television. I cannot understand what the news anchor says, for she was speaking in Thai, but I can understand that President Corazon Aquino passed away on August 1, 2009, and the whole world is saddened by the loss of a great woman. A woman who made a difference not only in Philippine democracy, but in the world's history as well.
As one of the babies of the 80s, I have very vague memories of what happened in the 1986 revolution. I can only recall a few details when I was very young watching a movie over and over again on Betamax back then: A Dangerous Life. It's a documentary of what happened during the decline of the Marcos dictatorship in the late 70s and during the years of the greatest political transition in the Philippines in the early 80s.
I was too young to understand the course of history at those times. But Cory Aquino is one of the personalities that shaped the lives of ordinary people...including myself who was then a child of one of those families who have colorful and traumatic personal accounts on the ousted Marcos dictatorship.
Cory's administration did not only change the course of Philippine history...it also permanently changed many Filipino families' lives, my family being no exception.
I am one with the Filipinos in deep remorse for the loss of a great persona in the name of President Corazon 'Cory' Aquino.
