Vaishutai

  A magnificent killer whale named Tahlequah gave birth and caught the world’s attention. Her calf died only thirty minutes after being born, each of those blessed minutes a sacrament to the progeny of love. But the real reason journalists and photographers and millions of viewers followed this mother’s story, was her willingness to grieve unbidden, to become a thing utterly governed by kinship. After a year and a half of growing this enormous life inside of her belly, and the immense feat of labor, and a half an hour of looking into one another’s eyes, Tahlequah proceeded to carry her dead baby on the tip of her nose for seventeen days, traveling more than a thousand miles all throughout the Salish Sea. And some people think that grief is not inexplicably beautiful. But perhaps it’s because those people (who are us people) no longer see grieving enacted publicly as a plea for sanity, as a way of feeding that which grants us life. There was no real grieving at my mother’s funeral–– sn