Prompt: it's Emma and Regina's anniversary.
This morning marks the anniversary, the anniversary of two people dying. Those two people were my moms. One gave birth to me, the other raised me like her own. They were two completely different people, yet at the same time, they were one and the same. They were each others yin and yang, and fate had moulded them together perfectly. Most people would argue that it was a sick twist of fate that lead the two of them to become who they were, but to me, and so very few others, fate wasn't as entirely fickle as we all seem to think.
No, fate saved one of my mothers and guided the other.
Fate is something we learn to accept very early in our lives, but there are some things in life that happen and we fail to be grateful for them. Sometimes we even ignore the fact that everything in our lives happens for a reason. We live and we die. How we live has been guided by fate and how we die has been planned by fate from our very beginnings. The fate of my mothers was something I have always and will always believe to be good. Every action they took and every choice they made led them exactly where they needed to be in life to find each other. Had fate not intervened, they would have spent their entire lives without one another, never being truly happy.
And then there's the whole thing about love. For so long, this entire town refused to accept that the Evil Queen was capable of love, let alone being capable of finding happiness. 'How can she love with a heart so black?' They would say whenever her name was mentioned in conversation. Alas, my mother's heart was never truly black. Before everything changed, her heart had been filled with dark spots; it looked beaten, battered and downright broken, but when Emma stumbled into her life, those dark spots began to fade to red, the bruises and gashes along the organ began to heal, until eventually, it was whole again. The day my mother died, her heart glowed the purest colour of red. It was a heart that had been loved, cherished and completely adored, even before it had been fixed.
My mother loved me, yes, and I loved her most dearly. But maternal love is nothing like the love one receives from a lover. Maternal love is always stronger on one side, so the healing qualities from a dual sided love is more powerful than anyone could dare to believe. Not even magic could give off the same healing properties that True Love does. And True Love isn't just given out to couples that are attracted to each other. True Love must be fought for. If must be defended. And it is always found in the places we never expected it to be. That's how my moms found it. They found it in each other whilst in their darkest times. My mother, Regina, was on her road to redemption from her dark past and was slowly falling back into her old ways, whereas my other mother, Emma, had plummeted into a state of depression from not having the abilities to be who everyone expected her to be. Being the saviour was never something on her life's to-do list, so when the entire town looked to her for help during their time of need, there was nothing she could do. And that's when they found each other.
The bench.
Their bench.
You could always tell when one of them was hurting because you would always find one, or sometimes both, of them sitting on a bench at the docks. I have never known whether it was the bench that led them there, or whether it was the knowledge that the sea would always come back to the shore. Some people even believed that they sat there simply to watch the serenity of the waves as they crashed against each other. Whatever the reason, the bench was a comfort for them. When my mothers reached their lowest points, they both found themselves sitting on either edge of the bench, glancing out towards the horizon. It was at that moment when they vowed to help each other on their journeys.
Emma promised to help Regina on her road to redemption and Regina promised to help Emma with her responsibilities as the saviour.
It wasn't the best plan they had, but it worked. They argued for weeks until they finally found some equal ground. That equal ground instantly turned into mutual respect and finally: love. Emma had fallen first. Every time she saw Regina, she would smile, giggle and act completely out of the ordinary. It didn't take much longer for Regina to catch on either and when they did, I had never seen both of my mothers so happy in my entire life.
Even with the entire town rebelling against the idea of the two of them being in love, they still managed to pull through with smiles on their faces and a tighter grip on each other. It had been mere weeks since their vows on the bench and they had become inseparable. Emma would always turn up in the mornings to spend time with us at breakfast and she would return immediately after work to spend the rest of her waking hours with her arms wrapped around Regina. Of course, I knew when Emma had spent the night, but more often than not, she would turn up within minutes of my mother's alarm going off. That was until they married and Emma moved in, of course. Then, that was when Emma would be awake first to prepare their en-suite for Regina's morning ritual before heading downstairs to make our family's breakfast. The entire relationship was domesticated and absolutely perfect.
Being nothing more than a teenager at the time, I never truly respected what they had for each other. But looking back on it now, I regret not smiling when they held each other, I regret not taking them up on their offers of a family hug, I regret not spending enough time with them when they wanted me to. I was a just a boy. I didn't want to see my mothers acting 'mushy' every hour of the day. But what they had was beautiful. What they had together was something that people spend their whole lives trying to find. Everything between them was honest, passionate and true. And at the very beginning, I attempted to avoid it like the damned plague.
Not even my grandparents, Snow White and Prince Charming, had the kind of relationship my mothers had.
What they had was unique.
Right now, you're probably asking yourself why I'm telling you about the relationship my mothers had. I am telling you this tale, my dear friend, because thirty years ago, on this very day, both of my mothers died. You're also probably wondering how they died, but that is an answer I cannot give. No one knew how my mothers died. Many still believe that they died of old age, but coincidences like that don't just happen. Two people madly in love with each other don't die within an hour of the other due to natural causes. No, I believe that my mother Regina died of old age and my mother Emma died of a broken heart.
They were together when they died.
Somehow, they still managed to die in each other's arms. That is something that I will forever be grateful for.
Although they both died in their sleep, I am pretty sure that before Regina died, she knew that her time was up, whereas Emma, I still believe to this day, that she still had many years to live before the wick of her candle finally gave out. But she didn't. Her heart refused to beat on. I believe that Emma knew that Regina had died, even in her sleep. They always seemed to know when one was hurting in one way or another and I believe this to have been no different. As Emma slept, her heart broke, killing her peacefully in the arms of the one she had loved most.
Their story is one that in have always cherished. It is a story I have told to many, and now, my dear journal, this is the last page of this book, and what I believe to be the last page in my own book. I have lived a long and happy life, but a life without my wife and a life without my mothers is not a life worth living, so this is my goodbye.
This is my goodbye to the world. This is my goodbye to my dear children. This is my goodbye to the wonderful lessons I have learnt throughout my journey of life. And this is my goodbye to you; you have been an ear to my thoughts and a comfort throughout my final days, so to that, I thank you and bid you my last farewell.
~ Henry Swan-Mills