I met Cory Aquino only once, before she found out she had cancer. The Foreign Correspondents of the Philippines (FOCAP) was trying to invite her as a speaker, ad the board of directors met with her. It was just a cordial meeting, not an on the record presser, and so no one wrote about what was said.
Yet what she said was very interesting.
To the women in the group she gave cloth bags — on which were printed one of her paintings. She learned how to paint after she stepped down from the presidency, and her paintings adorned the walls of her office.
She wasn’t selling them, she said; she would bequeath them to her grandchildren, adding that they would fetch a higher price after she dies.
She would like to die, she said, the way her husband did: quick and meaningful. Her only worry, she said, was her children. She wouldn’t want them to go through the same trauma twice. She talked as a woman who was not afraid of death; who knew that it would come, eventually.
Now I believe she is finally at peace. She had done what she could, in accordance with her beliefs.
Do you know where i can buy those bags with printed with Pres. Cory’s paintings? Or who makes them?
Hi Marion. Unfortunately, I don’t think those bags are for sale. Cory gave them to us when we talked to her, before she was diagnosed with cancer. That time, she said her paintings will go to her grandchildren. They might be the ones to decide whether or not to make reproductions of Cory’s paintings.