Whales Don't Have Lips

 2.2.15     Aboard the Vanguard  in the Santa Barbara Channel 

“Whales don’t have any lips,” the marine wildlife naturalist aboard Island Packers’ Vanguard explains to eighteen of us cruising the Santa Barbara Channel. This bright sunny day is perfect for tracking migrating whales as they swim slowly north on the one-year anniversary of Grant’s death. “They don’t have any nipples either, so how do the mothers nurse their calves on the 6,000-mile return trip to the Arctic from the birthing grounds in Mexico?” Prepared with illustrations and a plastic model of the California Gray Whale, she tells us the 1500-pound babies gain 100 pounds a day drinking 100 gallons of milk as thick as yogurt produced by their mothers. As the mother whale streams the milk through the water, her calf “catches” it. I love it. Grant would have loved it too.

     Grant and I chose shared experiences to mark special occasions like his birthday or Mother’s Day. We both felt we had enough stuff and preferred quality time together having fun to more tangible gifts. On his last birthday, in June, he chose whale watching in the channel, and we got up close and personal with humpbacks when they dove beneath our boat so close we felt we could touch them. Literally thousands of dolphins surfed the waves that day competing for attention with whitecaps. Four years earlier, we went fishing on the half-day boat for his 34^th birthday just after his melanoma was diagnosed and while it metastasized into the tumor surgically removed at UCLA.

     I know immediately I want to spend this day the same way Grant and I spent those birthdays - with him, on a boat in the channel where his ashes are scattered. I know I want to go without friends, free from distraction and conversation, mindfully present with the day, the moment, the experience and my son. It isn’t sad. It is wonderful. When the boat returns to the harbor after four hours spent with 800 dolphins and 11 gray whales teasing us with their spouts and tails, I feel peaceful, relaxed, infused with bliss.*

What? How can a mother whale nurse her calf when whales don’t have nipples or lips? Like so many things in life, it doesn’t seem possible at first glance, yet there is a way. We may not know the way, but there is a way. Nor do we have to know. Life supports itself. The mother whale has clear intentions – to nourish her calf, have it thrive, have it survive. She knows what she wants. The baby whale has clear intentions too – to eat, to grow, to thrive, to survive. It knows what it wants. The rest of the process is organic. It unfolds. What a beautiful metaphor for us in our lives.

So many times on the journey with Grant, I had no idea how something could happen, but it did. I had never before been present with anyone while they died, let alone my beloved son. How could I do that? How could I ever encourage him, send him on his way as his spirit left his body, with my final words, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” And yet I did. I didn’t have to know how. I had clear intentions – to love him, to support him, to honor his soul’s journey even if that meant his leaving me behind. It was organic.

Spiritual master teacher Edwene Gaines has taught me, “Your job is what. What do you want? The how is up to God.” Trust. Trust that there is a way even when I don’t see the way. Perhaps, especially, when I don’t see the way. Thinking and feeling there is a way, trusting I don’t have to know the way opens up a space that allows the way to appear. It lifts a weight off me. It lets me breathe. It’s so easy to stop the manifestation of a dream, to get stuck at how thinking there must not be a way because I don’t see what it is. I need to return again and again to the spiritual practice of asking myself, “What do I want?” Then let go, reminding myself, “God’s job is how.” That’s how I was able to send Grant out into the universe in a peaceful, loving way.

*Excerpted from

¡Ultreya! A Caregiver’s Journey of Spiritual Transformation

©2015 Terranda King