Finding compassion in unlikely places

This week I received a letter from Centrelink that was really just the nicest letter you could ever expect to get from a government agency or bureaucratic institution. No one was more surprised than me, as those who know me well will know what a conflicted relationship I've had with this agency in the past!

The letter was about our claim for bereavement payment, which we were eligible for to help with expenses after Max died. They wrote to tell us that the claim would be paid, but their letter was so carefully and simply worded, written to take into account the sensitivity and confusion people in our situation experience, that the letter made me actually cry. To think that someone had given thought to how such a letter might be received, and paid attention to how it was worded so as to convey all the important information without making the reader feel bombarded, all the while making it kind and personal, was really quite an achievement and for the first time in my life I felt like the government actually cared about me as a person!

Part of what touched me most about the letter was its acknowledgement of Max as a person who had been loved. 'We express our deepest sympathy on the loss of Maxwell', it said. I've no doubt that it was a form letter, but it meant so much to see his name in print like that, and for them to tell me that they were helping me in recognition of the fact that we have suffered a trauma, meant I also felt acknowledged as his mother.

That they were giving me money seemed like such a small thing after the sentiment touched me so much. I feel silly saying it, but that randomly generated letter meant so much to me, and I will keep it with Max's special things as another piece of evidence that he was indeed here, and that he mattered, and that the country he was born into cared about him some how.