We are so sorry, Matilda.

Matilda was ten years old, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach mass*cre.

Her aunt described her as “a very sweet, happy child, with a beautiful smile.”

Her teacher said she was bright, joyful, spirited; a child who brought light wherever she went and had many friends.

They are reporting that she loved the simple, ordinary goodness of life: walks on the beach, picnics in the park, trips to the zoo.

She had a sister who she was inseperable from. Another little girl who now has to deal with this h*rorr.

Matilda was with her family on the beach. She was celebrating Channukah.

She was where children are supposed to be.

But then evil came to the beach.

For all of us trying to process what has happened, the contrast is too much.

As adults, we want to make children happy.

We want them to be running, laughing, collecting shells, asking for snacks, daydreaming, and learning about their world around them.

They are not supposed to be learning how fragile the world can be.

Matilda’s family came to Australia from Ukraine in the 1990s, building a life rooted in safety, in normalcy, in hope. The kind of life where a day out with your children feels like the most natural thing in the world.

I keep thinking about the word light- how often teachers use it when they speak about those kids, who change the atmosphere of a room just by being there.

And now she is gone.

There is something uniquely horrifying about violence that steals children.

Childhood is meant to be protected.

Because ten-year-olds should never become symbols.

They should become teenagers, then adults, then people with complicated stories and long lives.

We are so sorry, Matilda.

May your memory be forever, a blessing.