Abhor

/,əbˈhôr/

verb

regard with disgust and hatred

Pain was something that existed before the first details of history were recorded upon concrete slabs or etched into trees. It was something that had always been around and just appeared when the first emotion was felt over a thousand years ago. Some think that pain is subsequent, like you perform actions and based upon them, it is determined by fate if you deserve pain.

That was the funny thing about the belief in subsequent pain though: the best people in the world always seemed to get hurt the most, which was why I believed that pain was just something that chose a few select people to pick on and stick within their group of friends. Why did I think that pain loved to pick on people? Simple, because it always seemed to pick on me.

Only a few months prior to that horrid winter was when Riley had been buried with her small flower crown that had been strewn to the side when that bomb had gone off; however, as I stood before the familiar mirror within mine and Luke's room, it was no longer I wearing the black headpiece and allowing tears to smear across my cheeks aimlessly.

Moira tried to hold herself together within the first few days of Calum's departure, even coming to visit Luke within the hospital wearing her wedding ring and a bright smile adorning her facial features, but then the news finally set in. Her eyes became lifeless once again just as they had been when she was pleading for the medics to care for her dead husband.

I placed my hand upon hers, noticing how she had kept her wedding ring firmly attached to her left hand, never once allowing it to come off as though it would connect her to Calum through death even. Tears came from her eyes once again as she tried to remain breathing consistently, something that she had been struggling with due to her sobbing.

"Why do they-" Her voice cut off, a bittersweet smile appearing on her face as she dabbed the tears out of her eyes with a tissue that I handed her a few moments prior. She took another deep breath, trying to relax in order to prevent another meltdown from occurring only moments before she was expected to walk behind her husband's casket.

"Why do they say 'until death do us part?'" she asked incredulously, looking into my eyes through the mirror. Emotion filled her blue eyes to the brim as she appeared to be searching for some sort of truth and profound reasoning behind her pain within the constellation of my own blue orbs; however, I had nothing that I could say to her to make her feel any better.

"Because even though he is gone, I don't feel like he really is," she muttered under her breath before collapsing into my arms once again as sobs overtook her body and made her feel as though she were falling apart under the weight of grief. I knew that similar grief, but I had never - and prayed that I would never - understood the full capacity of her falling apart.

I tried to calm her down, only to hear another sob burst from her mouth a few minutes after I had accomplished my goal. The will inside of her to carry on was slowly breaking apart as she wished that she was with the love of her life instead of being stuck here to wallow in a sense of self pity and be haunted by his ghost every time she walked through the halls of the colony.

In a way, I knew the feeling of walking amongst the hallways of the colony and being reminded of Calum's face and laugh every moment of the day as I had experienced numerous times in the days prior. Even while cooped up in Luke's hospital room, I was reminded of Calum's memory, constantly looking at the door and waiting for him to barge in with a wide, dimpled grin adorning his face.

It wasn't long after that we began walking, a procession following closely behind Moira, Luke, Ashton, and I as we went to approach the casket of Calum's. Nothing was draped over it as normally seen in those military movies when a soldier died - we didn't have a flag to drape across the brown casket even if we wanted to do so.

However, soldiers stood on the sides of his casket, two on either side with their rifles held in attention. Behind them stood a group of men with drums, ready to march ahead of the procession to the location of Calum's burial as we had opted to not have a service for him. Although their exteriors were tough as we approached, tears welled in some of the men's eyes as though Calum's death affected them greater than they let on.

Moira was a mess, throwing herself at the casket that had already been closed due to her wish for no one to see her husband in the condition that he was in when they had removed all of his organs and embalmed him. She was whispering faint words into the wood as I approached, kissing the top of it softly as though she were giving him a peck on the cheek.

"Come on love," I spoke gently and quietly, not wanting to cause a scene among the crowd, but knowing that prolonging this would only make it harder on her in the long run. My arms came around hers as I tried to pull her off of the casket in a mild manner, but she kept a firm hold, not releasing the wood as though it would bring Calum back to her.

"Calum," she whimpered into the wood, her lips still somewhat pressed up against it as her tears fell at a rapid pace and her stomach moved in a way that signalled she was hyperventilating. I looked over my shoulder to Luke and Ashton who appeared to be in a daze as though they were unsure of what to do in that moment.

As their eyes connected with mine, they moved closer and enveloped Moira's body, slightly dragging her away from the casket as the soldiers assumed their positions to carry the casket. That was when I noticed that two more pole bearers were needed in order to move the casket; however, my thought was quickly disregarded as both Ashton and Luke stepped up to the middle positions with their heads slightly bowed.

A small gasp came from Moira as she struggled to recover from her tearful moments at Calum's casket. Seeing the boys walk amongst the uniformed soldiers in their suits and ties gave me immense pride as they appeared to be at ease with the situation. Not that they did not miss their friend because that would never be the case, but they had seemed to accept the fact that there was no way for them to bring Calum back at that point.

The whole procession walked amongst the snow with the drummers in front, then the casket, and finally Moira and I leading the grieving colony. I felt the ice cover my feet where my shoes opened up but I couldn't care less about my feet in that moment as I kept Moira pulled in close to me and rubbed the shoulders of her jacket to keep her warm.

The drum beat reminded me of all those times that I would walk in one of those rooms in the dome to find Calum lying against a bed and listening to some old rock band that I did not know the name of. He had always explained the context of the song and went in depth on his love for the music, but half of the time, I sat there and allowed him to speak while I let out the tension in my shoulders from the stress that the war was taking on me.

When we reached the trademark willow tree that held three stones beneath it, I was taken back in time to one of my favorite moments among our small gravesite. Although the area had a sad mood hanging over it like a guillotine, there were so many memories implanted in my memory of the spot that I found myself far too immersed in them to listen to the final quotes being made about Calum's short life.

My feet crunched on the leaves beneath them as I approached the place that I had not been within the past two months, recalling the dream that I had been having for the past week quite vividly as I smelt the trees and gazed at the sunset that lit them up like a masterpiece. I hadn't noticed that there was a familiar person following me, but that was far from my mind at that point.

My arms swung by my side as I stood in front of the three tombstones, reading them in order from left to right: Riley, Michael, and Janice. I blinked my eyes in an attempt to hold back the tears from flowing freely into my line of vision. In that moment, I was realizing just how much I had lost in the past year, taking inventory on the memories that were lost to me because of their untimely departure.

"You blaming them too?" the tanned boys suddenly spoke, causing me to slightly jump as I looked back at him to find him smiling slightly but keeping his head down as though he were waiting for one of them to smite him from the sky. I couldn't help but laugh at the thought as I recalled all of the horrid things I had said about Michael months prior.

"Just thinking about how much I lost out on," I whispered regretfully as he took his spot beside me in his semi-thick windbreaker. A similar jacket adorned my body as I pulled it into myself closer, wishing that I was able to remember the sound of Michael's voice without the help of a recording device.

"That's pretty selfish of me, isn't it?" I asked him, slightly turning to look at his profile as I saw a face splitting grin take over his face. He shook his head minimally while letting out a soft scoff as though we were hiding our conversation from the corpses beneath the ground that we were standing upon that autumnal afternoon.

"I do the exact same thing," he muttered under his breath as though he were afraid to actually say the thought out loud in fear that it would cause something drastic to shift in the universe. When nothing actually did change, he looked back at the tombstones, first toward Riley, then Michael, and finally landing upon Janice's.

"When she first died, I came out here everyday just to yell at her headstone, thinking that if I could only tell her how much I loved her that she would come back." My eyes fluttered up toward his face, taking in his locked jaw and tear filled gaze as he gently wiped the wetness from his eyes as though he wasn't sure why it was there.

"And then Moira came along," he practically whimpered, almost as though he were so confused about how the universe had worked completely against him in bringing who he thought was his soul mate to him, only to take her in an untimely fashion. My heart hurt for the tanned boy as I watched his head shake, almost as though he were trying to forget Janice's memory.

"At first it felt like I was cheating," he explained, his tongue darting out to wet his lips as he looked over at me with a painful expression taking over his deep brown eyes. "She had only been gone for, what, five months?" I nodded my head, agreeing with the ballpark number as I recalled the time frame of those horrid months.

"But then I realized that I can't blame myself for everything that I missed with her," he told me, his hands stuffing into his black jeans' pockets as he slightly kicked at the leaves adorning the ground where the three people we cared about were permanently residing. "And they wouldn't want us to blame ourselves for their death," he reminded me.

Tears started to make their way into my sight as I looked over to find him in a similar position despite having already knowing the wise words that he spoke to me. I took a shaky breath as I began to feel overwhelmed with the thought of grief that was coming over me in a consistent wave of nostalgia.

"They would just be happy that you are taken care of," he whispered sweetly in my ear as his arms wrapped around me tightly in a platonic way that told me that he only wanted to ease my pain. I held onto his arms, finding it hard to breath as sobs took over my mouth and I began to feel the familiar swell within my throat that had come over me for each funeral.

The sudden sound of gunshots going off into the winter wind shook me away from the bittersweet memory that had taken over the expanse of my mind. I found that Moira was clinging onto my arm as sobs rose from her throat in an attempt to release that anguish that was clearly building within her body due to the procession and military esque burial occurring before her.

While Moira was grieving and releasing her emotions, I found myself to be numb to the fact that they were lowering my best friend's body into the earth and covering it with dirt when the time came to drop our single roses into the hole. Moira went first, quickly followed by Ashton, and then was ended with Luke and I.

Despite being numb to the feeling of his burial, I found myself stuck in place while I stood above the hole in the earth, wanting terribly for Calum to begin beating on the top of the casket and state that there was some type of mistake, but I knew waiting for that moment would be like waiting for a thunderstorm in the middle of a drought: illogical and disappointing.

Nevertheless, Luke had to hold my body close to his for many moments as I simply held the rose in my hand above the hole that it was meant to be dropped into. He said nothing though, almost as though he knew that I needed to make the decision to drop the flower down to the casket on my own in order for it to symbolize what it needed to: me letting go.

The memories of Calum sitting in front of me and jokingly asking "and how does that make you feel" while he was my designated therapists flashed through my mind. Those days that I would find myself in his arms for no reason other than missing Michael a bit too much. All of the times when Luke and I would fight and Calum would be the first person to know about it and instantly take my side even when I was wrong.

The times when I would curse at him for caring a bit too much or being a bit over protective when that was merely his job as an older brother figure. Every single time that I would go to him and expect him to fix every single problem in my life with a snap of his fingers. Not to mention, the moments when he gave the most inspirational and profound advice to me when I wasn't even expecting it.

All those moments and all of those memories replayed in my mind like a movie and the ending scene was when I was standing there with the rose held loosely in my hands. I blinked the tears out of my eyes one last time, one dramatically falling into the hole due to my head looking down whenever I blinked, and with that I finally did what I had to do.

I let go.