Things in Nature Merely Grow by
Yiyun Li
My rating:
5 of 5 stars
Yiyun Li has written a sad story which begins: "There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged...My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home." As one courageous friend writes to her an hour and a half after a child's death, "you did everything you could to help James find his place in life, but he wanted to leave and one must let go."
In reference to her brilliant son James, she mentions the memoir
Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet which captured how James felt about the world and another important book to him,
The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism.
She ponders over the years between the two children's deaths, how James might be accepted by the world as a person "different from most people, maybe even for the world to benefit from his intelligence."
As many challenged her functionality afterwards, Li asks "what else can I do but to go on with the things I can do, to keep my body nourished and active and my mind occupied and sharp?" Marking time in piano playing and practice, knitting, games on her phone, reading, baking, pruning and feeding the roses, weeding "because weeds are part of nature, too, and things in nature merely grow."
I appreciated her comments on reactions from friends and her wish that people had the honesty and courage to say, I'm not capable of handling this difficult situation, or, I'm uncomfortable because I don't know what to say, rather than telling themselves that they are absenting themselves out of respect for the bereaved. The most comforting condolences were those expressing helplessness and the pain of not having the right words, not the clueless mentions of their own losses or how to overcome grief.
A sobering but instructive memoir.
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