Beatrice on Sebastian

Cataloging plants and animals counter balanced Sebastian’s negative feelings to the world of people. Plants and animals didn’t usually disappoint; people often did.

Sebastian’s obsession with protecting the environment began. As he worked more and more, he found a kind of comfort that would guide him in the future.

As an environmentalist, Sebastian could possibly restore what might have been wrong or prevent further damage to the planet. He would document everything he saw, meticulously study how each plant and animal interacted with the other, and then find a way to protect them both. Sebastian sought after the minute details in an environment to prevent the encroachment of man on the wilderness.

For example, Sebastian prevented a plastic factory from being built in Honduras, because of the mating habits of a frog, and was able to protect a huge section of his beloved rain forest in Panama by discovering an orchid unique to the whole of Central America.

The single discovery of the orchid would prove to be Sebastian’s greatest accomplishment; at the same time, grant him opportunities for his future career and mark a significant change in the man.

* * *

The day Beatrice finished those journals, she cried again, and like the last time, she wasn’t crying for herself; she was crying for Sebastian.

For years, Sebastian had pretended nothing mattered except his work. Like a dutiful husband and father, he went to work every day; never once did Sebastian let on as to how miserable he might have been. Meanwhile, I was constantly telling him what a terrible father he was, when all along he felt abandoned, alone.

In a short matter of time, Beatrice, too, would leave him.

Sebastian’s heart has been broken so many times when he was so young. How could she tell him she was dying?

Now Sebastian had a family of his own, he would never abandon it, regardless of the circumstances. The man Beatrice married would be faithful to the end, because of what had happened to him before he met her. His convictions were stronger than her's; stronger than any man she’d known.

Beatrice's life had been about my daughters before the diagnosis, and even more so afterwards. She was doing what she was supposed to do to protect them, and she did protect them. What she failed to realize was that, in doing so, she’d alienated Sebastian. Her preparation, teaching and pushing the girls had become more important than the family as a whole. Sebastian turned to his work, not surprisingly; the one thing that had remained constant in his troubled youth, the place he turned to in crisis.

It must have appeared to Sebastian that Beatrice had forgotten he was their father. Anna and Carina were her children, but they were Sebastian’s, too. He responded to the behavior she’d demonstrated. Having known a part of his history, Beatrice should have realized he might have felt rejected, but she wasn’t able see past my own ambitions.

Devotion was the unhindered sled on the already slippery slope Beatrice would descend. She devoted every waking moment to my daughters, and forgot the rest of the world. She sacrificed all the things around me that made a woman be a better mother. She told herself she didn’t need the individual things most women needed, because the girls were more important. She also found a place as some sort of martyr in how much she sacrificed for them, especially after the diagnosis. In addition to her self-sacrifice, she let fear and jealousy creep into my pitiful reasoning. No one person was good enough, she thought. She’d raised those girls on her own. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew that wasn’t true, but she'd managed to keep pushing it away. Then, the dream happened. She couldn’t stand the thought of some strange woman taking care of her children. She wasn’t sure Sebastian would re-marry, and she didn’t want to take a chance. Her ability to think clearly at the time had been sketchy, at best. The illness kept her fighting for a stronghold on her martyrdom. It was the one thing that was the key to this whole drama, so she had convinced herself. She clung to it with the passion of a heretic. She reasoned the fear and the jealousy were the fuel to keep her going, but they only made her do crazy things. She began to doubt herself and Sebastian. In the end, it drove her into Sebastian's office that day where she found those damned journals.

Now that Beatrice knew the complete history, everything had to change.

She was terribly wrong. This was not Sebastian’s fault.

Why was it so easy to look back and see where she’d been wrong? She couldn’t change any of the events in the recent past. The only choice was to do something for Sebastian’s future; a future for the family as a whole.

However, what could she do to help her family when she knew she wouldn’t be there?

All along, she’d known what was necessary for her daughters: someone had to be there on a daily basis to help them cope with their new lives. However, who?

Moreover, who could Sebastian trust to help him?