All of us who truly believe in justice should grieve for Daphne Caruana Galizia. I sure do. I grieve for Daphne the human, the person, the individual. But I also mourn for her and miss her every day because of the unbearable loss Malta suffered.

Malta is an abnormal place. And, because it is abnormal, gross and coarse people are glorified. A recent sensational - that is, sensationally annoying - podcaster, Ricky Caruana, has decided to give us his bit about Daphne.

This multi-talented man, DJ, philosopher, author, event organiser, and Joseph Muscat fan, said that no one should grieve or talk about Daphne. Or rather, that only her close family and her husband can legitimately do so. Only they are genuine, he added, when they speak about Daphne or really feel the sadness of her loss.

This voice of wisdom, profound knowledge, this teacher of the unwashed masses, told us that we, non-family and still grieving, are liars, poseurs, and harbour a political agenda.

Ricky Caruana went on to pontificate that we don't mean what we say. To prove his point, he said that if one of his close family members died, and his friends told him how sad they were, that would be fine. After a few days, things would return to normal and no one - except maybe the family - would remember his dead relative; or truly care. Life, he said, would go on.

These are words that show how Ricky Caruana has no idea - or rather he does but wants to confuse his followers and listeners - what the horrific assassination of Daphne meant to me and all the others who still grieve.

I fully endorse what he said about the sadness or grieving his close family member's death might bring on. Of course, I would - if I were a friend of his - totally forget a few days later and move on. Daphne's horrific end was, and remains, different.

I knew Daphne. Not too closely, but I knew her. We spoke regularly and I had followed her - and admired her - ever since she took up writing.

I always felt she was special; specially gifted, specially envied, specially targeted by people who felt threatened by her writing. I always believed - and time and her posthumous adulation the world over have proved this - that she was too much for us, for Malta.

Daphne was too much of a relentless, unforgiving, uncompromising, conscience. She showed us up, the majority of us, but especially the Labour party leaders, their henchmen and their followers, as cowards, petty, and adulators of the wrong gods. She showed us up as supporters - to survive in our own provincial way of letting power go unchallenged - of near-enough deafening omertà. She showed us up, especially the corrupt, the sleazy, the facilitators of the worst people who took over the reins of power.

And Daphne, the Daphne I knew, was uncovering horror after horror. She, alone, a woman with a blog and a newspaper column, was showing how corruption was at the heart of the Labour government.

So when she was executed - and yes that is what she was - I felt totally lost. And knew Malta had reached a new level of horror unseen in the history of this island.

I mourned and will mourn my friend who was a cherished mother,  daughter, wife, sister, aunt and amazing woman. Yes, I agree the worst mourning and grieving is felt mostly by her family and no one of us can ever understand what they feel. But I mourn her and mourn what Malta lost, what a treasure we sacrificed because we couldn't face our own conscience. Because, instead of listening to what she was shrieking - that the country was riven by corruption and ruled by criminals - Daphne was dehumanised in her life, murdered for uncovering the truth, and is still being denigrated in death.

If she had died a natural death, if she had died in a traffic accident, I'd have been sad. But yes, life, even with its tribulations, would have gone on.

Yet life after that car bomb in Bidnija did not go on. We lost a jewel, the best journalistic jewel we ever had. The political fireball who fought for justice and truth.

Even if she could be seen as having some shortcomings - who after all doesn't ? - she surely should not have been subjected to utter horror. A State fomented the environment which led to her murder and was found guilty by the state itself of having encouraged her untimely death.  Her stories still send shockwaves now, eight years after her brutal assassination. Whether she is proved right or not is irrelevant.

What's relevant is that she was killed for doing her job. I will grieve on, even though I am not family. And I will only find some semblance of solace when Malta as a nation, admits that Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed because she was fighting for the truth.

Let no podcaster, or political hack, ever dictate what grieving is, and how sincere. The narrative that people like Ricky Caruana want us to follow is that, with Daphne gone, all can be forgotten. All can be shoved under the carpet of history. That there is no need for closure, for full justice, for full uncovering of all those involved in Malta's most heinous political crime.

If people stop grieving for Daphne Caruana Galizia, the forces of evil would have truly triumphed.

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