Things in Nature Merely Grow

by Yiyun Li

My heart already began to feel that sensation for which there is no name. Call it aching, call it wrenching, call it shattering, but they are all wrong words, useless in their familiarity.

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

And yet life is still to be lived, inside tragedies, outside tragedies, and despite tragedies.

Knowing something that may or may not happen in the future does not exempt one from the tasks of living.

It was Vincent’s death that made me begin to use that phrase, “every single day, for the rest of my life.”

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 saw the news and have been agonizing over what to say to you. If there is anything I can do to ease your pain, let me know. You did everything you could to help James find his place in life, but he wanted to leave and one must let go. I, too, was unable to reach him in my very limited way, and I am devastated.”

Thinking about my children is like air, like time. Thinking about them will only end when I reach the end of my life.

Better stop asking these questions that tread in the realm of alternatives—whatever the answer is doesn’t make a difference in this life.

Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that James, before exiting the world, had begun to turn away, evading the cameras, evading attention, evading, even, the future.

They both journeyed on more resolutely than I would have wanted them to, and they both crossed that great, awful distance after I said my last “I love you” to them.

The analogy of pebbles was given to me by Brigid when she stayed with us the weekend after James’s death. In a moment of self-pity, I blurted out—“Am I not the worst mother in the world?”—to which Brigid replied that we both knew the answer to that question, and we also knew the question was not a real question, only, a pebble of a question. Better kick the pebble out of your way instead of letting it stop you, she said. If one is destined to live as a Sisyphus in an abyss, there is good sense in distinguishing a meaningful boulder from insignificant pebbles. A Sisyphus making a boulder out of a pebble would only become a comedy. In the past few months I’ve developed a habit of scrutinizing my mind: is this thought a pebble of a thought, is this worry a pebble of a worry, is this question, seemingly unanswerable, only a pebble of a question?

Little did James know, and little did I know, that someday I would live with a black hole inside me, the precise shape of my two children.

A child who loses his or her parents is called an orphan; a wife sometimes becomes a widow; a husband, a widower. But there are no such words made for those who have lost their siblings, or their best friends, or their children. Some losses are easily named, some remain uncategorized, uncategorizable.

Between the ages of five and twelve, James would preface many of his sentences with the adverb “apparently,” a habit that would vanish after he lost Vincent. Perhaps Vincent’s death stopped the world from being apparent.

To philosophize is lonely, but to philosophize is also to learn to walk past some emotions, including that momentary loneliness, and say: these are but pebbles that should not and will not stop me.

But life is neither practice nor rehearsal. The absoluteness of life—whether it’s life in an abyss or not—is that in each day, time has to be marked before the next day arrives.

I said I could never say things would get better for sure, but that his feelings might change, and he might think differently at a later time. He sighed, and agreed to “give life another chance.” In the end, there are only a limited number of times that one can give something or someone another chance. Had Vincent lived, had he asked me the question now, I would have answered differently. I know suffering, and I have written well about suffering, but I also know that one’s relationship with one’s suffering can change. For Vincent, I don’t think life would ever have become easier. However, I do believe that we learn to suffer better. We become more discerning in our suffering: there are things that are worth suffering for, and then there is the rest—minor suffering and inessential pain—that is but pebbles, which can be ignored or kicked aside. We also become less rigid: suffering suffuses one’s being; one no longer resists.

I do not know if these thoughts would have helped James at all. For years, he had perfected suffering as a state of being, and in the end, he too turned away.

Children die, and parents live, but it doesn’t mean they go on living like Humpty Dumpty or pathogens of infectious diseases. When Vincent died, some friendly people faded out of my life. “I don’t want to intrude on her” and “I don’t want to make her sadder by talking about Vincent with her” were, I was made to understand, how some people felt. As though any one of them could outshoot life to injure me; as though anything they said would make me sadder!

True compassion takes courage.

Words may fall short, but they cast long shadows that sometimes can reach the unspeakable.

And for those kindhearted people who were keen to offer silver linings on religious, spiritual, and other grounds: I’m afraid I must disappoint you. Sometimes there is no silver lining in life. Some consolations are strictly and purely for the consolers themselves. Please hold on to your silver linings, as I must decline.

I remember feeling relief on my friend’s behalf, rather than pain and loss: the world is a cruel place; why stay here among these cruel people, people who will never dare to go to where you’ve found your freedom?

People can hurt only our feelings, not our thinking—not unless we let go of the independence of our minds.

And people who intentionally or unintentionally hurt other people: I have come to the conclusion that they cannot help themselves, and they cannot be helped. This is only an acknowledgment, and it is not understanding or forgiveness, neither of which I will give.

Children of abusive parents might grow into rebels, or they might become escape artists. I have never been an overt rebel, but I have honed my craft as an escape artist all my life. “That need only children of abusive parents know,” I said to my husband. “The need to keep one thing to yourself and making sure no one can take it away from you. You have it, I have it, but our children didn’t have it. If they had had that, they might not have chosen suicide.” “But how much more they’d have suffered,” my husband said. “And we didn’t want them to suffer.” “No,” I agreed. And yet they still suffered. Only, not under tyrannical parents. We had spun them cocoons and fortified them. And in the end, our endeavors did not keep our children alive. They became escape artists, too.

There are times in life when the world seems to stand still, and when it turns again, nothing is as before.

Sometimes a mother and a child are like two hands placed next to each other: only just touching, or else with fingers intertwined. Then the world turns, and one hand is left, holding on to everything and nothing that is called now and now and now and now.