The sudden passing of Victor “Cocoy” Laurel left many fans stunned. More than just a singer and actor, Cocoy was best known as the onscreen partner of the late National Artist Nora Aunor in the beloved film Lollipops and Roses.

While some speculated that Cocoy had romantic feelings for Nora, others pointed to the social divide between them as the reason nothing blossomed. But as someone who doesn’t subscribe to the idea of the Laurel-Diaz clan being “matapobre,” I believe that narrative oversimplifies what they truly shared.

What Nora and Cocoy had was something far deeper—a love that went beyond the physical, beyond labels. It was a quiet, accepting love, the kind that sees a person fully and chooses to stay even from a distance. Cocoy may have loved Nora deeply, but perhaps he also knew she was destined for something greater than what a relationship with him could offer. And Nora, in her own way, likely feared losing the only person who had loved her without condition.

After all, romantic love, when it fails, rarely transforms into an unconditional platonic bond. And so, perhaps they chose the safer path: loving each other from afar.

Those close to them say that Cocoy was always there for Nora—through her triumphs and her trials, her love life, finances, and even her personal struggles. His final visit to her wake, frail but present, was a powerful testament to a man who never stopped valuing her, not even in death.

Sometimes I wonder—what if Nora and Cocoy had ended up together after her failed marriage to Christopher De Leon? Could he have been her anchor, her gentle reminder of who she was beneath the fame, the pain, the weight of public expectation?

But that story wasn’t theirs to live. Nora left this world no longer in her prime, but paradoxically, she became even more beloved after her passing—as people finally began to grasp the magnitude of who she really was.

To Cocoy, Nora was always a gem. The love of his life. His muse. And now that Cocoy is gone, just two months after Nora’s passing, I can’t help but reflect on the timing. Had he gone before her, she would have been devastated. It’s almost as if he waited—to be the gentleman until the very end.

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Cocoy Laurel reminds us:

Love doesn’t always need to be loud. It doesn’t always wear the label of romance. Sometimes, it exists in silence, in loyalty, in decades of showing up without asking for anything in return.

Sometimes, romantic love grows into something even purer—and maybe, that’s the kind of love Cocoy and Nora shared.