FOLLOWING his huge first re-election victory in 2010, Congressman Dong Gonzales talked about a political plan with her wife, Beth, at the front and center. If he would complete his three-term, he would field her in the next campaign as his successor in Congress.
She would be a good politician, Dong would say, despite her patrician, sometimes aloof, bearing. Probably even better.
It wasn't meant to be. His loss in his third bid in 2013 to their nuptial "ninong," Oscar Rodriguez, derailed the idea and her death during the tragic incident last Thursday at Resorts World denied it with finality.
Had she left the place a few minutes earlier, according to her older brother, the plan---and Beth (including an older sister) would still be alive. She and her sister were about to exit at the second floor when they saw the gunman walking towards them while firing his rifle. They scampered for safety in one of the bathrooms where they succumbed to suffocation.
In life, Beth did her best part to bring her beloved husband to the place of honor and prominence, if not fame, that he deeply aspired for and eventually gained. In death, she was rewarded with the same honor and prominence she never asked for herself.
She was a humble and thoughtful person, the brother reminisced. She had just arrived from the United States and called to tell him that she bought him a new pair of shoes. She always did that to people close to her.
She was also very private, secure and trusting. She had visited Dong's office in Congress only once, he remembered.
At the Anao Parish Church where people streamed in and out to pay their last respects, long rows of wreaths, coming from people she had not probably met or known, stood elegantly from the church gate up to near the altar. They were nobly symbolic of the passing of a dignitary.
The Greek Euripides said that a man's possession is a sympathetic wife. Beth exceeded that standard. She was the perfect wife for Dong whose feats in life, coming as he did from humble beginnings, are difficult to imagine without her. She was the maker of the king whom she absolutely adored. She did not only serve him; she fought for him as people close to the couple, knew only so well.
Resting in her white coffin, dressed regally in a red dress, Beth was as lovely and peaceful as she could be. Dong will surely, terribly miss her. So will those whose lives she had touched.