Friends can be killer whales sometimes

When they don’t get the home they deserve

The Close by Thalia Toha, 2015. Mixed Medium.

What if friendships are deeper than the ocean?

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So one of my kids asked me the other day why I haven’t seen a particular friend recently. I only remember giving her non-answers. I was busy. She was swamped. And schedules conflict.

But in reality, something else happened: I had realized something.

Most of our conversations go something like this:

Thalia: How’s your son’s arm doing?

[Her son injured it a while ago].

Friend: The doctor said it might not heal properly.

[We spent 20 minutes talking about her experience with the doctor, which made the treatment confusing].

Thalia: That doesn’t sound too fun. Same thing happened to me at the doctor recently.

Friend: Yes, I don’t know why this is the case.

Thalia: I got injured and thought that certain treatments would help. But it hasn’t.

Friend: Honestly, it feels like I should’ve gone to a different doctor.

You could probably tell from this conversation that I was dying to tell her everything. She was one of my closest friends. But even after a couple of attempts to introduce the subject, she never did ask questions about my injury. 

It was definitely selfish of me …

… To try to direct the conversation my way when we had been talking about her son’s injury for twenty minutes. But after years of similar brick-walled conversations, I’m beginning to think that maybe—just maybe—she just doesn’t really care.

The fact that this made me feel selfish might be a problem itself.

No one side of the friendship should ever feel like they’re taking (and giving) way more than the other. Especially if it wasn’t something like an office relationship, a vendor-patron relationship, or anything else that isn’t voluntary.

It’s a friendship.

And there’s one common interest: to feel at home. With a friend.

When this common interest is missing, friends can turn into killer whales.

This was quite literally the case for Dawn Brancheau, who trained and instructed killer whale Tilikum during one of the live performances in 2010 at Orlando’s Sea World in America.

You may have remembered their story.

Killer whale trainers would spend upwards of eight or more of their waking hours with the whales. It’s definitely long enough to get that whales feel, think, want and need. Just like humans. The trainers might’ve even spent more time each day with the animals than they would with their own school-age children. And definitely more than they would their aging parents.

So yes, in that sense of the word, the trainers are the whales’ friends. They might even be their family. 

Tilikum had always been moody. Headstrong. And stubborn as a brick. But not unruly. And for all but one instance, Dawn was the friend—the family member—who understood him. Enough, at least, for him to show kindness back by being persuaded to perform for the live audience.

But one day, Tilikum suddenly grabbed all-smiles Dawn in his beak, and dragged her into the water. It was deep enough to drown just about anyone relying on air to live. He thrashed her around in the depths like a ragdoll. And he broke her body like it’s less of a doll and more of a trashed rag.

Those who survived drowning usually talk of flashes of light, many things in white, a blurring of the vision’s perimeter—until finally: everything went dark. Darker than black.

How did this happen?

How did an animal who’d jump, do flips, grab treats, and get applauded two or three times a day—suddenly … didn’t?

But that’s exactly the problem with this question.

To the spectators, it’s all sudden. But to the animal, it’s not sudden at all. It’s just been years of one-sided:

“Up, Down, Jump, Flip, and Treat.”

If I had a friend who only repeats the same five words for years—I’d start to think that maybe, just maybe, this friend really doesn’t give a damn …

… At least no more than the easy: Here, boy! and Good job, girl!

It’s nice, alright. But years of even ‘nice’ can start to feel like fins rubbing against brick-painted walls: Corroded. Plastic. And miniatured.

For creatures whose natural domain spans from Antartica to Alaska:

It isn’t home if it’s a doll’s playhouse.

Because home just isn’t the same as being at-home.

Being at-home is sort of like having a friend. It’s like jumping into the Pacific coastline on a sizzling August high noon. Or sliding into a warm bath after the depths of a January snow day in Chicago.

Home … understands.

The shaded area (bright green) shows the entirety of a killer whale domain. Aside from certain areas, their home spans across much of the earth’s seas. [Data: NOAA]

I’ve never seen killer whales in the open ocean.

But whales, or any fish in their natural home, make home mean more than just an understanding. It is about seeing.

Silvery fish in the sea are especially good at reflecting sunlight. But not in the way human eyes see light. They make us see, by refracting light with rainbow scales, like a part-scientist part-sailor who never needed a map to find the Mariana Trench.

They just do.

Killer whales use a coordinated hunting strategy and work as a team to catch prey. [Photography: Lazareva Studio]

And I suppose for creatures—who would have traveled miles with packs of their own kind, who would have watched mothers lead their young straight down into the dark depths only to then rush up to the surface with every breaking dawn, who’d school waves like fifteen-feet jumps are just play things—they might just see jumps and dives as floodgates that open the ancestral memory of a true home:

One that understands and sees.

Free from judgment. Unjudged, as Tilikum wished. Free, like Dawn. Free, without form. So that the dive is free form. Now: brick-break the dam. And damn with the doll’s playhouse. It’s time to understand. To stand for the under. For the true dawn. Time to break:

For home.

I hope that this somehow helps all of us, myself included, consider all the wrongs we could right, with friends we had wronged, when we killed things that understand them. 

-Thalia

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