The tragedy continues to swirl like a tornado.
When Aisha Fraser was murdered the other day in Shaker Heights, the emotional rumble of heartache swept through me personally because my family knew her family very well.
Even more so, the murder of Aisha Fraser has devastated the entire community of Shaker Heights where she worked. But the pain goes far beyond a suburb's boundary line.
Aisha Fraser's uncle, George Fraser, and I spoke over the weekend about the enormity of family pain. Calling Aisha "beautiful," "incredible," and a "servant leader," George Fraser quoted the Roman philosopher Seneca who lived 2,000 years ago.
"Death is the day that we must all judge my past. Then if that is fact, that is the case, we make Aisha's past matter."
So how do we make Aisha's past matter?
Each one of us can stand firmly against domestic violence and teach that to our sons and daughters.
At last night's Shaker Heights vigil on the school grounds where Aisha taught, there were pleas for love and peace. Those at the vigil looked to each other for strength, realizing there is no sense to be made of a senseless act.
This is an emotionally upturned community. But what now? What is the future of Aisha's two elementary school-aged children whose eyes witnessed the most horrible of crimes?
"It would be a model for her children if her children can be repaired," says George Fraser. "And that's really what we're going to have to do.
We as a community must help to play our part. Aisha's children will be with the godmother she had chosen had her life been taken. Yes, said her Uncle George, she did think and speak of the possibility of a violent death.
Always, she thought of her children.
In many ways, her children are ours, too. You see, all children represent our collective future. Like so many other children in need, we must put our collective arms around them to guide them. As a community, we must help save the children.
So each one of us must be the change we want to see in the world.
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