Oh Sybrina Fulton, you break my heart with your words, with your grace, with your kindness, with your dignity, with your strength. Should I ever find myself facing a difficult situation, may I show even 1% of your character. You are the true definition of what it means to be a mother.

And how I wish for you that today had been the end, instead of the beginning, how I wish for you that today had been an end of your suffering instead of another stepping stone toward learning a new normal, which seems like a normal no one should ever have to learn.

How I hope for you that you can know what your son, your child, your baby boy has done for so many people around this country for the past 44 days, and while it will do nothing to repair the permanent ache in your soul, may it salve the wound in your heart. Your child, your Trayvon caused so many of us to rise up from our normal lives of being moms and sit down and say to ourselves, enough is enough.

I listened to the words of Angela Corey tonight in my minivan on the radio with my two daughters in the backseat, and I cried when she announced the charge against George Zimmerman. I said a little prayer that I hope somewhere in heaven my mom met Trayvon and maybe she shared with him how her own father took her so many years ago to a little tiny church in Memphis, TN to hear a relatively unknown man named Martin Luther King, Jr. preach. Or how when that man later went on to be brutally gunned down, her own father risked his job in that same city and walked out of his office when they would not lower the flag to half staff. And maybe Trayvon shared with her that he just wanted some Skittles and a cold drink to watch some basketball. Maybe he even shared that on the nights he probably did dream of being a hero, this wasn’t the way he imagined. Or anyone could have imagined.

My daughter asked me after I turned off the radio why this was even a case? She said, “They know who was shot. They know who shot him. Why is this even a case, Mommy?”

Sweet girl, I do not know.

Then she broke my heart even more.

“What was the boy doing that made the man shoot him?”

And the answer is so simple and so rending. Nothing. He was doing nothing, my baby, but just walking down the street. The man thought he looked suspicious because he was black.

“Why would a black person look suspicious? Black people aren’t suspicious. Celeste is black and she is my friend and she would never be suspicious.”

And there you have it. For my eight year-old, it is simple and clear.

I wish it were so for everyone.