..how do you measure pain?...

..we tend to quantify things into units and measures..distance into kilometers, light years..mass in cubic meters..murders in degrees..1st degree or 3rd degree murders..as in burnts..but how do you measure pain..? or sufferings..? how do you put a scale on sufferings?

..there is saying in Malay that goes.. no matter how heavy a weight in the eyes of the beholder, heavier still the shoulders that is carrying it..

but pain and suffering is something so personal and private.. something subjective..definitely not definitive... a quiet demeanor and a smile hides an individual's suffering..we cannot detect anguish that is hidden.. we just do not bother to see, for we just sally along with our life, no really caring to see things amiss within our family, or within our neighbourhood..

yet, we are, after all, of one author..interconnected, through space and time..until death diminishes us..like that nine-year old, snuffed out of her life..and dumped into a retention pond..

..how, then, do we measure the pain and sufferings of her parents..? her grandparents?..