Requiem For A Horse

On Saturday, our Erin (hey, she may be working at the courthouse now, but she'll always be "our" Erin) lost her horse, Poltergeist (known to his friends as Polie).  He was in the field with his herd and suffered an injury to his leg.  What most people don't know about horses is that of the 205 bones in a horse's body, almost half of them are in their legs.  That means that those bones are not all that big.  Horses also bear most of their weight on that structure of fairly small bones.  Unlike humans, horses can't lie down and keep the bone immobile while it heals.  Their anatomical structure requires them to keep upright and keep moving the majority of the time or suffer respiratory and circulatory problems.  That's the reason serious leg injuries kill a horse more often than not.  Polie was Erin's faithful companion, and she (as well as all of us who knew him in all his splendor and goofiness) mourns his loss.
So, what does this have to do with the Trenches?  Plenty, actually.  Polie was a magnificent horse, large and powerful, yet graceful (when he wasn't spooking at his own shadow or a random tree!).  People are always surprised that animals who look as strong as a horse can be so fragile.  Some marriages are like that too.  Look at Seal and Heidi Klum or Will and Jada Pinkett Smith.  To all outward appearances, those were two of the strongest marriages in Hollywood.  Seal and Heidi Klum renewed their vows every year on their anniversary.  Will and Jada Pinkett Smith were Hollywood's power couple.  Yet, it turns out that beneath the visible exterior, there were deep cracks.  Like poor Polie's injury, the cracks weren't caused by anything extraordinary:  time and distance apart.  Just like Polie's injury, the continuing time apart compounded upon itself to create a marriage ending injury.  Most of the time, it isn't anything major that ends a marriage; it's the little things that add up to reveal and widen stresses and cracks that cause separations and divorces.   If we need a reminder to pay attention to the little things because they take care of the big things, this is probably it.  Here in the Trenches.