"Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss," by Margaret Renkl

Having recently lost my mother (and having lost my father sixteen years ago, as well as other relatives and friends along the way), I find myself drawn to accounts of loss and death and their effects on those left behind. The current corona virus pandemic adds to this forced preoccupation with illness and death. One beautifully written account is “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss” (Milkwood, 2019), by the New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl. This powerful and evocative collection of short, interconnected, memoiristic chapters tells stories of the author’s family history, of the sustenance and joy she receives from family (alive and deceased), from gardening and close attention to birds and other elements of nature, and yes, of the losses she has experienced. There is a poetic quality to Renkl’s writing. Complementing the writing are the lovely illustrations, mostly of birds and other aspects of nature, by Renkl’s brother Billy Renkl. There is a unique balance of the delicate and the sturdy in the descriptions of the family and nature. I will end with a few lines from the book that especially spoke to me. “Dad had always been the one person who could make me feel both completely protected and certain of my own strength” (p. 154). Both of my parents made me feel that way too, and I know how fortunate I am to have had that foundation, which has sustained me my whole life. “I think of…my parents every single day. They are an absence made palpably present, as though their most vivid traits…had formed a thin membrane between me and the world: because they are gone, I see everything differently” (p. 191). I can only say “yes” to this description. And this one: “Here is what no one told me about grief: you inhabit it like a skin. Everywhere you go, you wear grief under your clothes. Everything you see, you see through it, like a film” (p. 218). Yes. Yet this book is not only about loss and pain; it is also about the consolations of life, of nature. Renkl ends with this: “There is nothing at all to fear. Walk out into the springtime, and look: the birds welcome you with a chorus. The flowers turn their faces to your face. The last of last year’s leaves, still damp in the shadows, smell ripe and faintly of fall” (p. 218), and “I learned the world would go on. An irreplaceable life had winked out in an instant, but outside my window, the world was flaring up in celebration” (p. 219). The strength of this book -- besides the impressively beautiful writing -- is the realistic weaving together of the feelings of grief and the feelings of consolation. This book speaks to me on both levels, as I am sure it does to many of its readers.