We stood, a shifting cluster of humanity, pressed against the wooden railings of San Francisco’s Pier 39. It was a temperate spring day, and the contrast between the warming sun and bitter ocean created little vortices of wind that ruffled T-shirts and sent all manner of hairstyles askew. It was also Mother’s Day, a holiday that creates ripples of a different kind for a woman in a long-term relationship with a man and his two gorgeous boys. The boys were spending the day as they should have been, which is to say with their actual mother. The man, meanwhile, was stewing that work had once again taken me somewhere other than home. And so, on that awkward holiday, I was mostly whiling away the hours, first with wine and overpriced seafood, and then by playing tourist in a sea of couples and families.
Standing on that pier, we gaped as dozens of sea lions jockeyed for their own positions on similarly slatted floats. There was more than enough space to go around, and yet the massive animals tussled over the same small patch of real estate. As they did, we squealed and took lots of photos, singularly focused on the throng of mammals until one of us—a young woman in tight jeans and a brand-new engagement ring—noticed the two sea lions that weren’t a part of the group.
“Oh, look,” she said to her fiancé. “A baby.”
At that, we all cast our gazes in the direction of the young woman’s outstretched finger. There, on an otherwise empty float, a female hovered over her pup, nosing the top of its diminutive head and doing all the other things you’d expect a mother to do for her baby. We all watched and cooed until, one by one, it struck us:
Her pup was dead.
As this realization settled, it came first with collective silence, followed by awkward assertions about nature’s will and lame jokes not even the tellers thought were funny. Some families moved on. Others stayed, bearing witness as the mother roared at any sea lion that came near. We flinched as she tugged her limp baby from one edge of the float to another, nudging its face and chest with her mouth in what, at the risk of anthropomorphism, can really only be called a series of frantic kisses. And as we continued to watch, I found myself hoping it would end: that she would realize the baby was dead and move on.
She didn’t.
Eventually, I had to. I left for an interview not knowing when, if ever, this sea lion would leave her pup. And I carried the image of them both for the rest of that day and the next and the one after, when I returned home to the man and his two gorgeous boys. Months passed. As they did, our ripples became waves. The waves grew bigger. And then they broke, which is to say he broke, with a force that took my breath away.
“Like magma,” our couples counselor tried to explain to me. And each time she did, she’d motion as if her chest had cracked wide and something uncontrollable now gushed out. That uncontrollable thing, she said, was a lifetime of pent-up rage. Whenever I asked her how to dam it—if such a thing could be mended—she’d shrug: “You have to wait it out,” she’d say.
Instead I tried my own tugging and nudging, hoping something would soften—that this rupture would close, that trees and grass would begin to grow there again. Instead, it got worse. As it did, I found myself remembering that female sea lion, wondering if this was how she felt on that float.
We know just enough about other species to know that they do feel. Elephants display empathy by placing their trunks in one another’s mouths. Magpies hold funerals for one another—gently pecking at a dead bird, then bringing it offerings. Bonobos make out. We don’t know much about what mother sea lions do. They usually give birth and raise their pups in remote rookeries, which are hard to observe. What we do know is that it’s not uncommon for a mother sea lion to tend to her dead pup for hours—or even a day or more. Whether this is an act of grief or an attempt to save the baby, scientists can’t say. Nor do they understand when and why the mother eventually gives up. But when she does, she will abandon her pup where it rests and swim away, never looking back.
I didn’t know how to do that. And so I spent that next season in a winter rental, thinking I would return home by spring. I went to our weekly counseling sessions, where the man railed about his anger and the counselor and I listened, dumbly nodding. I nudged harder, luring him to my new bed hoping I could fatigue his anger. He let himself be towed there. And in the resulting exhaustion, I grew hopeful.
But then I realized we sometimes don’t know any more about our species than we do others.
On a cold February afternoon, and as swiftly as his magma had first erupted, the man left with his two gorgeous boys. There were no goodbyes. One moment I was a family member; the next moment I was not. What came in its place was grief that crushed bone.
A farewell kiss can be the very sweetest. It can also slice right through you. But it’s the ones left inside—the ones we never get to give—that often weigh the most. I cannot say why this is. Nor can I say why any animal—sea lion, human, or otherwise—remains with something that has ceased to be. But I think maybe it’s because we know on a molecular level that so few of our feelings die with a heartbeat, with a declaration, or even with a vanishing. And so we remain, hoping these feelings alone are strong enough to manifest a return.