Every day is basically an unknown. I remember periods in my life when it seemed things would always be the same. But it turned out they weren’t.

I think about the leap of faith it takes to jump out of bed each morning and face the day. We really don’t ever know what is coming.

I am presently grieving over the fate of a beautiful young black single mother not too far from where I presently live. She was killed in cold blood by an irate neighbor. A white lady if that matters. Guess it does around these parts of the American South.

The single mother’s kids had been playing outside and drifted onto the white lady’s lawn. The white lady threw a roller skate at one of the kids. She scooped up another kid’s iPad that was laying on the grass. Naturally, the kid ran to his mother for help.

When the beautiful black mother went to the white lady’s house to retrieve her son’s iPad, the white lady fired four shots through her unopened door. The white lady then claimed “self-defense.” Didn’t seem to matter that the white lady was the one that was aggressive to the black lady’s kids. The white lady told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that she “felt threatened” by her neighbor’s presence at the front door.

I listened to an interview yesterday with Christian Cooper, the black birdwatcher who in NYC in 2020 was falsely accused of harassment by Amy Cooper, (no relation) a white woman who refused to leash her dog in an on-leash section of Central Park. Cooper calmly recorded on his phone the white woman’s hysterical phone call to police complaining “a black man was threatening her and her dog.” The video recording told the tale. The white woman lost her job, was roundly condemned, and faded into infamy.

Christian Cooper wrote a book on birdwatching and just landed a gig as host of a National Geographic birdwatching show. Finally, at least one story of a white person and a black person’s confrontation ended well. For Christian Cooper at least.

I don’t get racism. Not saying I have plenty of best black friends. Not saying I can comfortably put myself in the shoes of a black person’s day-to-day reality in North America.

It’s just that I know and have met too many wonderful people of all races and nationalities. Standards of decency for humans are pretty much the same around the world no matter what color their skin is. Character, class, and manners count more in any individual than their race.

So my heart is heavy and grieving for that beautiful young black woman’s family. I don’t know how her kids will make sense of their mother’s loss as they grow up. No more than their bereaved grandmother can make sense of the loss of a beautiful daughter.

And then there is the unknown of how justice will play out in this case, as if that even matters to those most intimately affected. This is the land of Trayvon Martin, a skinny 15-year-old black kid who was shot dead for just walking around his neighborhood. His murderer got off scot-free based on the infamous “Stand Your Ground” laws that exist in Florida.

And so it may well be for this murderer – already charged with the lesser violation of manslaughter. It is an unknown almost too terrible to contemplate. That she might walk free.

Whichever way it goes for the hate-filled woman who coldly and viciously took this young woman’s life, it won’t matter to her kids. All they’ll know is facing the unknown every morning of waking up for the rest of their lives without their mother.