Things in Nature Merely Grow

by Yiyun Li

There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged before I go on with this book. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen.

There is no good way to say this: words fall short.

The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction and paltry imagination and meager understanding.

Intuitions are narratives about potentials, possibilities, and alternatives. In that sense, intuitions are fiction, until, once confirmed by life, they become facts.

No matter how long we get to parent our children, there are only limited numbers of “I love yous” we can say to them. That, too, is a fact.

Children die, and parents go on living. Those parents go on living because death, though a hard, hard thing, is not always the hardest thing. Both my children chose a hard thing. We are left with the hardest: to live after their deaths.

I feel deeply stunned and wounded by life”—then

Things in nature merely grow—the line has become a reoccurring thought after James’s death—things in nature merely grow until it’s time for them to die.