Birds and Grief

 

Review - Birdology, by Carolyne Van Der Meer

Carolyne Van Der Meer guides us into paying attention to what is going on in the outdoors, especially with the birds – pigeons, sparrows, and seagulls. In her chapbook of fourteen poems and short essays, she links the struggles and deaths of birds with the struggles and dying of people she loves.

Birds and their songs draw us out of our slumping around under the weight of sorrow and death, and remind us that today is still a day to live. They invite us into their world for a time to watch, flying up to interact with us, cocking their heads as they observe us, and some of them become companions for a time.

I value the connections between nature and grieving. When my wife died unexpectedly in her 40s, I frequently went hiking in Yosemite to make sense of the injustice of her early death, understand death’s place in life, and heal from my sorrow. Besides coyotes and the occasional bear, I watched the variety of birds throughout the day from the obnoxious Steller Jays to red-wing blackbirds trilling in the meadows, to the grand soaring of hawks. But my favorite bird was the American Dipper, and every evening I would sit by the river and wait for my dipper to arrive and sing its solitary tune. Without nature’s help, I don’t know if I would have made my way through grief or been able to trust life enough again to risk loving someone new.

When you see a creature that is injured or someone you love is dying, you instinctively want to help, but you’re not sure if you’re supposed to or what would be helpful, and you feel conflicting emotions. “Birdology I,” the first poem in the collection speaks to this. Van Der Meer connects wanting to help an injured pigeon with wanting to help her ailing mother decide whether or not to enter a care home. A father-in-law’s medical problem is spoken of as a misalignment, as if doctors could prevent him from dying if they could figure out how to put everything back together correctly.

The Birdology essay series is quite interesting. “Birdology II” acknowledges that dying is traumatic, yet the author notices house sparrows bathe with no apparent worry about their lives being short, and she realizes that she wants to live like this, unshackled to fear. “Birdology III” speaks of death as a stranger when her father-in-law moves closer to that point. “Birdology IV” continues her struggle over moving her mother into assisted living. “Birdology V” talks about emotions being pared to realities – notice and remember, hunger and feeding, life and dying.

Each poem gathers wisdom from the outdoors. For example, in “Mother, Nature” the biting of a snapping turtle as its defense is equated with the snapping of the mother who is in pain and feeling vulnerable. Nature’s reassuring life-force comes through in “Trees” as the author slows down and learns how to listen to them.

Memorable phrases appear throughout the chapbook – viscosity of meaning, the anchor of loss, bodies break in different ways, passel of pigeons. While pigeons, sparrows, and seagulls get the most press, blackbirds, raccoons, groundhogs porcupines, and cows also make appearances.

The author notes that some people believe that birds carry the souls of the dead. For Trappist monks, birds carry messages to us from the divine.

Birds are good companions when we’re grieving, and we would do well to let them into our sorrow.

(Birdology was published in 2025 by Cactus Press, Montreal, Canada, 26 pp.)