It was never really about the sentence, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 9.
Braderick Green, 37, is already locked up, facing 11 life sentences for shooting at the cops who arrested him.
Nor was it about revenge, which is senseless; or justice, which only would have been served had Green, who has a long criminal record, been behind bars years ago, before he killed her son, said Jane Bowen.
Green was convicted last month of shooting and killing Brian Meise, 52, in the Yours convenience store in the heart of Catonsville on Nov. 17, 2009.
For Bowen and other family members, Green's trial was just the latest chapter in a dark and tragic story — one that started long ago, when Meise was a boy and his best friend was Troy Green.
Troy Green is Braderick Green's older brother.
John Magee, a prosecutor with the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office, said the families' decades-old connection did not play a role in the trial.
But it lingers on in Bowen's mind as a particularly poignant layer in the tragedy.
"He came from a good family, in a good neighborhood, so you don't have the normal excuses" for a life of crime, Bowen said of Green, who grew up on Melrose Avenue, not far from her own family's home on Woodlawn Avenue near the Beltway exit onto Frederick Road in Catonsville.
Bowen still remembers pushing strollers with Green's mother, Hattie, she said. Both women had lots of kids and would run into one another often. She recalls letting Brian, who was inseparable from Troy, spend weekends with the Greens.
Such is Catonsville, Bowen said, where all the families, at least those that have been around long enough, know each other.
A woman reached by phone at the Greens' home on Melrose said the family had no comment.
But Bowen said she spoke after the trial with Meka Green, Braderick Green's younger sister, who testified for the prosecution that her brother had been at the family's Melrose home, not far from the Yours store, around the time of the shooting.
Bowen said Meka Green told her that the Green family was also "devastated" by the crime, partly because they all knew and liked Meise.
How familiar Braderick Green was with Meise — they were more than 15 years apart in age — is unclear, but it's a question that continues to bother Bowen, who wonders what the circumstances were surrounding the robbery, in which Green also shot Yours shop owner Sudhir Shah.
"Did he know it was Brian when he went into that store?" Bowen asked.
'Graphic' images, shared letters
Elaine Monet, Meise's sister, said the surveillance camera footage of the event doesn't answer that question.
In the video, which was shown during the trial, Meise can be seen for a second or two standing at the counter talking to Shah, Monet said, before Green storms in, pushes him out of the camera's view and shoots him. The video then shows Green go around the counter toward Shah.
The video was only one piece of the "very graphic" evidence shown during the seven-day trial, Bowen said, a reality she was grateful the State's Attorney's Office and the court liaison shielded her from.
"I sat in the hall during all the (violent) testimony, the photographs, the crime scene pictures," said Bowen, who otherwise witnessed every part of the trial.
"It was really nice that they had the liaison there," said Monet, who also attended most of the trial. "That was very comforting."
Bowen said everyone involved in the case — Magee and the prosecution team, the jury and even the defense attorneys — did a thorough, professional job.
All that remains now is the sentencing, which the prosecution has requested Judge Patrick Cavanaugh make life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Shah, who is back operating his shop, could not be reached for comment.
Whatever sentence is handed down, Bowen said she is glad the trial, which she dreaded, has ended.
What won't end are the emotional moments when she remembers her son is gone.
"I have accepted my loss, but tears are not far from my eyes," she said. "Tears are always close at hand."
Bowen described how her son would always trek through the fresh snow on her lawn whenever he came over to shovel.
When it snowed this past winter, she looked out and there were no footprints, she said, her eyes brimming.
"That was really upsetting," she said.
John Meise said his brother's murder was a shock he's still working through.
"He and I were just going to be buddies and enjoy the free time in our lives," he said, noting that his brother had been his favorite person to watch Ravens games with.
"He was a big chunk of my life that's been taken away."
In a victim's statement to the court that Cavanaugh will consider before sentencing Green, one of Meise's nieces, Katie Kaiser, wrote that his death left a hole in her heart, but she has tried to conquer the sadness because it isn't what her uncle would want.
"My hole will never go away, but, instead of slowing me down, it will push me forward, just like uncle brian (sic) would want," the statement read.
Bowen wrote her own statement to the court as well.
She also wrote one more letter — addressed to Hattie Green, who Bowen called the "sweetest, loveliest lady I've ever met."
In the letter to the mother of her son's killer, Bowen said she wrote that they both had "crosses to bear" because of the murder, but should "remember the good times," too.
She hasn't heard back, yet.