It's The Little Things

It really is. The small smile-making things that can turn a day around. And also the littlest indignities and slights that can spawn a thunderstorm in your head.

For instance, earlier this evening I was wandering around a website that belongs to a friend of a friend. Just clicking through pages, really, getting a feel for the layout and the sorts articles they publish when a comment about stressors caught my eye: divorce was the second most stressful event, topped only by the death of a spouse. Seriously? Who makes these lists?

Now, I don't fault the website, or even the person who wrote the article, because you can find these "life stressors scales" just about anywhere (I've seen dozens of them) and - unless you are reading a list specifically ranking types of grief - you're not going to find "Surviving The Death of Your Child" on any of them. And, I'm not arguing the stress-factor of either of those events; I've been divorced (okay, a few times) and while I've not buried a spouse, I have read enough about grieving to know I'm in no hurry to. However, most of these lists are based on the Mother Of All Lists, also known as the Holmes-Rahe Scale. There's no child-death mentioned on the HRS...and so no child-death on any of the other lists either.

I wish I could make this go away by ignoring it, but I can't. The grief is huge and real and everyday is, as Renee once said, like walking a minefield. Even if it isn't on the list.

This is my Buddha Frog, dusted with snow. Imagine.