One of the things I pride myself on is knowing what to say. Finding words when there are none, stringing together syllables that help make sense of emotions.
Sometimes I seek out the words of others who I think will understand more than I do; the Annabel Crabbs, the Virginia Triolis. The Maggie Dents to help me manage the impact on my kids. The words help somehow.
I have no words today. I don’t have the words to help my children understand what happened yesterday, in Australia, on a Sunday arvo at the beach. On a December weekend, families doing the same thing that other families right across the country were doing - the same thing we were doing in our little corner of the countryside at the Buckleboo Christmas Tree - coming together as a community to celebrate something special. Something joyful.
How an afternoon that likely started with preparing food, scrambling to get the family out the door, packing folding chairs and special-treat soft drinks for the kids, could end like this.
There is little to do at a time like this but to feel it together. To share the stories of people who ran to help. It’s what compels people back to the beach at Bondi today, to lay flowers, or to hug someone, to mark the day and say, ‘I feel this.’
It’s what compels me to speak into the void, to say I feel this too.
Our flags are lowered in big cities and tiny towns from one side of our country to the other, as if they feel the weight too.
When tragedy strikes, I always think of the parents. The parents who have lost a child to a senseless act, and the parents whose child perpetrated it - the grief and loss felt by both.
To think that yesterday a father led a son to this act, stood beside him while he made a decision with the most horrific consequences, is so far beyond the realm of what I can understand.
We feel isolated here in Australia - even more so in my remote corner of the country.
When we see atrocities on the nightly news or in our social feeds, even if it is uncomfortable to admit, our horror is tempered ever so slightly by our distance from what unfolds on our screens. When those atrocities pierce the veil, when something dark slips under our collective radar, the sharp slap of shock reminds us that we are not immune.
The challenge for us now, as we speak to our children, our families, our friends - the thing we must all do beyond offering thoughts and prayers - is to move through these next days and weeks and months with hearts open rather than hearts closed. It is hate that brought us to what happened yesterday. There is no joy, no peace to be found from more hate.
Out my window, birds dance through the sprinkler on the back lawn. The afternoon light makes diamonds of each droplet before it hits the grass. Stripey beach towels flap on the old Hills Hoist. It is very beautiful and very peaceful and very Australian - or at one version of it - and tonight I send that peace, with everyone ounce of love I can muster, to all of the families who are hurting.