Sometimes you meet a journalist so awesome you’d think she would live through the end of the world and be there to report it, complete with infographics and a “What Went Before” sidebar.

So when news got around before Christmas Eve that LJM was gone, we were crushed. I was waiting for the Christmas Mass when I read the text message and let out a loud, “Oh my God.” People looked at me, and all I could say was, “My boss is dead.”

It’s hard to explain to people, even to family, why I’m grieving for a boss on the happiest time of the year. This orphaned feeling, I guess, is an Inquirer thing. I can rattle off LJM’s accolades—longest serving PDI editor in chief, keeper of the Edsa flame, our Yoda and our Gandalf—but it would still sound strange to most people.

Losing LJM is a shared heartbreak among us, the people she worked with in the Inquirer, the paper she helped found.

One editorial Christmas party years ago, we had a mock raffle since the tambiolo was still there. We raffled off the cutest guy in the room, the videoke, the electric fan. Heck, we even raffled off the tambiolo.

LJM was about to go home, and she checked out what the noisy “after party” was all about. We asked her to draw the name of the next editor in chief, and she did! She also surprised us by giving P10,000 from her own pocket so we could have a real raffle, saying, “I hope the one who wins this is someone who really needs it.”

Then there was a weekday Valentine’s Day. She barged into the  room while my office friends and I were
having dinner and said, “Ha, wala silang date!” and left. Well, it was true.

She credited reporters for good stories, and if LJM said your story was good, your heart would do cartwheels.

When we pull all-nighters closing pages and I felt like I didn’t have the energy for it, I would remind myself that LJM had been doing the same for the past three decades. Tired? Loaded with deadlines? Can’t write? What would LJM do?

We will miss you, Ma’am Letty. The Inquirer world—the universe, rather—will never be the same.