A Uvalde mother rages at Washington

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By Philip Elliott

Washington Correspondent, TIME

The First Christmas Without Lexi: A Uvalde Mother Mourns Her Daughter and Rages at Washington

Programming note: While Phil is off this week, the D.C. Brief is highlighting a must-read story just published out of TIME's Washington bureau from Jasmine Aguilera. Phil will be back with one column next week and return to his regular schedule in January.

On a drizzly December evening in Washington, D.C., Kimberly Mata-Rubio marched silently from Union Station to Capitol Hill with dozens of other families from Uvalde, Texas. Her 10-year-old daughter Lexi Rubio was murdered in the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24. Mata-Rubio had never been on a plane prior to the shooting, but this was now her seventh trip to Washington in as many months to pressure lawmakers to pass restrictions on assault weapons.

She carried a sign reading, “Assault weapons took my daughter, Lexi.” When the march ended in front of the Capitol building, Mata-Rubio, 33, was weeping.

This is not the vocation that Mata-Rubio envisioned for herself, but it is now her future. While she’s taking on the legislative battles, she is also navigating her complicated and painful grief. She is mourning the loss of her daughter—but also the loss of the life she and her family had before the shooting. “Who I was before ceased to exist the moment Lexi died,” Mata-Rubio says, sitting on a bench outside the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 8 in between meetings with lawmakers. “This new me, it’s difficult figuring it out.”

As mass shootings in the U.S. become increasingly common—there have been more than 400 in the U.S. since the tragedy in Uvalde on May 24, according to the Gun Violence Archive—she says it should be clear that her anguish could become any other parent’s, as well. “I would receive comments, something along the lines of, ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through,'” she says. “And I’m like, well, no. As a mom or a dad, you can imagine… Only when you imagine my pain will you join me in fighting.”

Christmas Eve marks seven months since Lexi and 18 other children and two teachers were killed by a gunman. Normally, Lexi would help her father, Felix Rubio, decorate the outside of their home for the holidays. They’d drink hot chocolate with marshmallows and watch Christmas movies together. This year, the family decorated Lexi’s gravesite with Christmas lights and giant candy canes.