MANILA, Philippines – Former president Corazon Aquino’s eldest grandchild remembers her more as a doting grandmother, aside from being a champion of democracy.

“To me she wasn't a president or a hero, she was my lola [grandmother],” Jiggy Aquino-Cruz, eldest son of Aquino’s daughter, Balsy, told reporters during the first night of her wake at the La Salle Greenhills gymnasium.

Cruz said that he and his cousins saw the former president as their “second mother” who took care of them whenever their parents were out of the country.

The last time the family spoke to Aquino, Cruz said her last word was “family.”

“My tita [aunt] asked her, 'Mom, what do you want?' and he said 'family,’” Cruz said.

Aquino, who led a popular revolt in 1986 that restored democracy in the country died at 3:18 a.m. Saturday at the Makati Medical Center, following a year-long battle with colon cancer. She was 76

“All of us were there. We prayed the rosary then we heard mass,” said Cruz, who served as the family’s spokesman while his grandmother was sick.

When asked if their family was prepared for the former president’s friend, Cruz said: “You can never really say that you are prepared for death but in our family, we were thankful that we were given the time to, to spend as much time as we can with our lola.”

“It’s a blessing that God us more than a year and it made us a whole lot closer to one another,” he said.