Imelda Hoping to Take Remains Home : Philippines: She stops off in Hawaii to pray at her late husband’s crypt. She is due to leave for Manila on Monday.

Former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos knelt and kissed her husband’s gold-trimmed casket Friday, saying she still hopes to take the remains back to Manila when she returns Monday from nearly six years of exile.

In a ceremony marking All Souls’ Day, a day of services and prayers for the dead in some Christian denominations, the widow of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos prayed and left a white rose inside the small air-conditioned crypt where her husband has lain, awaiting burial, since his death here in September, 1989.

The wooden crypt, with glass doors and windows, perches on a hillside with a spectacular view of lush green mountains and distant crashing surf. Imelda Marcos has decorated the walls with six large photos of her husband, all inscribed to her. A pair of his pajamas and favorite golf hat lie inside the tomb.

“I said to my husband I will bring him home soon,” Marcos told several dozen reporters, supporters and former officials who now seem to follow her every movement as her departure date nears.

The widow, normally seen in public in black, wore a white dress, with white shoes, blue and lavender scarf and thick string of pearls. As usual, she arrived two hours late. She wore heavy rouge under thick black sunglasses.

Asked if she had bade farewell, she replied, “I never say goodby to my husband.” She repeated her intention to return home Monday, adding, “And maybe I will even be able to bring him home Monday.”

The government of Philippine President Corazon Aquino has offered to let Marcos take her husband’s body to his home province of Ilocos Norte for burial but has barred his return to Manila, saying it will refuse to let her chartered Boeing 747 land if the body is aboard.

Mrs. Marcos insists that she wants him buried in Manila with full military honors. Marcos, a guerrilla fighter in World War II, claimed that he was the most-decorated soldier in both the Philippine and U.S. armies. Many of his medals later were revealed to be bogus.

The battle for the body is only the most recent of the struggles between Imelda Marcos and Aquino, who led a popular rebellion that forced the Marcoses to flee Manila in 1986 after two decades in power.

During their exile, the Marcoses were linked to at least three of the seven coup attempts against Aquino. And despite denials from both women, supporters of both are urging them to run for president in elections next May, if only for the entertainment value.

“The popular imagination is writing the script for a war of the widows,” said Blas Ople, a former Cabinet minister under Marcos who flew here to join the entourage.

Nelson Navarro, a Manila newspaper columnist who is sympathetic to Imelda Marcos, agreed, saying: “There will be a lot of forces to stage a Marcos vs. Aquino, Part II.”

“Imelda is camp,” he said, explaining the enduring public interest in her. “She’s part of us. She’s like Liz Taylor. Or the Royal Family. . . . You like her or hate her. But you can’t ignore her.

“She’s performing in a play she’s crafted herself,” he added. “It’s like theater.” If you’ve heard it before, it’s boring. But Broadway is based on the theory that there’s an endless supply of people from Peoria.”

Marcos flew here on the chartered jet Thursday night from New York with about 50 journalists and more than a dozen private U.S. security agents.

The government has said she will be arrested within 48 hours after her return to Manila. She faces 38 criminal charges of graft and tax evasion, as well as 34 civil suits. The government accuses the Marcoses of looting the impoverished country of at least $5 billion during their rule.