For Sarah C. Imperial: A Promise, Unkept

By Jonas Cabiles Soltes

I once promised to take Sarah C. Imperial, my friend, to Napa Valley.

We talked about it like we always talked about everything—with half-jokes, half-seriousness, and the unspoken assumption that we still had time. We imagined the vineyards, the long quiet walks, the wine she’d insist she didn’t like but would sip anyway, for the story. But time, it turns out, is not always a willing accomplice. I never got to take her there. And now, I never will.

Sarah is gone.

I found out only recently. The kind of news that slows your day down and takes the air out of the room. We hadn’t spoken in months, but it never felt like we were far apart. Ours was a friendship that didn’t demand constant tending. It simply stayed.

We met at Bicol Mail, in the cluttered newsroom where press releases, community events, and the occasional argument about Oxford commas coexisted. That was where our friendship took root—between deadlines, over lukewarm coffee, beneath flickering lights.

Sarah was sharp. The kind who would catch a dangling modifier from across the room. She could be a grammar nazi, yes—but only on paper. In life, she was warm, compassionate, patient. She gave people the kind of space they didn’t know they needed.

She remembered people long after most would’ve forgotten. Not because she needed something from them. It wasn’t networking. It was love. If you were her friend, you were her friend—and she never stopped being one, even if you hadn’t spoken in a while.

She liked observing people. She liked stories. She liked a little gossip, too—who doesn’t? But once she got to know you, she’d defend you without hesitation, especially when you weren’t there to defend yourself.

We drifted at times, like many friends do. Life got in the way. But we always found our way back to each other’s orbits. And when we did, it was like no time had passed.

Sarah was not just a personal loss. She was a loss to community journalism. She had the rare ability to write stories that mattered without making them about herself. Even when she wrote about lifestyle or lighthearted things, she made sure the people in them—ordinary as they may seem—felt seen, heard, understood. She believed even small stories deserved care.

And now she joins Sir Nilo Aureus, our former publisher—who, in one of those now-sacred memories, once drove us home after a long day at the office, back when our newsroom was still whole. I imagine them now, finally catching up. Maybe editing each other’s sentences. Maybe laughing again.

We will miss her in so many small, stubborn ways. We will miss presswork days at Bicol Mail, when the office buzzed with stress, stories, and snacks. We will miss cramming headlines, chasing closing time, and riding home with the boys—the rest of the newsroom team crammed in cars, half-asleep, half-alive from deadline adrenaline. Those rides weren’t just transportation—they were transitions between the world of stories and the lives we had outside them.

Sarah wasn’t perfect. Neither was I. Neither was our friendship. But it was real. And it was enough.

I still catch myself thinking, I should tell Sarah this, or Sarah would love that line. And then I remember.

The promise I didn’t keep will stay with me. But so will she.