There is absolutely no emotion to explain how my mom and I felt when we got that e-mail on Sunday afternoon. We had registered to get tickets to Michael Jackson’s memorial and out of 1.6 million people, we won! It was the best thing that’s ever happened to us.

My mom has grown up with the Jackson 5 and has listened to him since he first started. She would always blast the Jacksons in the car and that is what made me get into his music.

For me it was always more than just music that I loved about him. He had such a beautiful soul, beautiful heart, and to me he was absolutely perfect. He could make every ethnicity come together as one. Even though I didn’t know him personally, I felt every time he sang he was singing to me; his music just touched lives everywhere.

When we got to Los Angeles on Monday, we waited in a two-hour line to sign the Michael Jackson wall, which will be placed in his museum one day. There were people from all over the world – Sweden, Australia, Africa, Mexico, Japan, Europe, Germany – just to pay their respects to a man who did so much more than sing and dance.

The next day was his memorial. It wasn’t a funeral; it was a celebration of his legacy and life. The whole service was absolutely breathtaking, phenomenal, amazing, and we felt privileged to be there.

Even though he’s gone, his music and countless good deeds will forever be in our hearts. He was a man of generations; he could make me jam out to “Black or White” or “Way You Make Me Feel” with my grandma, and no one could do that.

There was one poster that caught my eye as we visited his star on the walk of fame and it said this: “Thank you for giving my family something to eat that night; you saved our lives – from Africa.” This made me cry so much, because this man was so misunderstood.

Just as Rev. Al Sharpton said, “There was nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what your daddy had to deal with.” No one could have said it better. He is in the Guinness book of world records as the most charitable celebrity who has lived.

He is a legend, King of Pop, Rock and Soul, and to me, the greatest entertainer who has ever lived.

– Contributed by Kayla Smith