Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

by Margaret Renkl

There is still plenty to go around—plenty of flowers, plenty of seeds, plenty of bugs—but the creatures in my yard are not interested in sharing. For them, scarcity is no different from fear of scarcity. A real threat and an imagined threat provoke the same response. I stand at the window and watch them, cataloging all the human conflicts their ferocity calls to mind.

Human beings are creatures made for joy. Against all evidence, we tell ourselves that grief and loneliness and despair are tragedies, unwelcome variations from the pleasure and calm and safety that in the right way of the world would form the firm ground of our being. In the fairy tale we tell ourselves, darkness holds nothing resembling a gift. What we feel always contains its own truth, but it is not the only truth, and darkness almost always harbors some bit of goodness tucked out of sight, waiting for an unexpected light to shine, to reveal it in its deepest hiding place.

the end of caregiving isn’t freedom. The end of caregiving is grief.

Oh, the lives we grieve in their going. Oh, the lives we grieve in their going on.