Things in Nature Merely Grow

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

Caution: This book contains references to the sensitive topic of suicide, which may be triggering for some readers. Discretion is advised.

The facts must be stated first - Yiyun Li and her husband are parents to two sons, Vincent and James. They lost Vincent to suicide in 2017 when he was 16. In 2024, their younger son James also died by suicide, at age 19. These are the facts and they are, for most of us, incomprehensible, a tragedy we can hardly fathom. 

After Vincent died, Li wrote a book for him called “Where Reasons End”, an intense conversation between a mother and son after his death. For James, Li chooses a “thinking" way rather than a “feeling” way to try and navigate this loss, because this is who James was - quiet, brilliant, unknowable. And her words are how Li makes sense of anything. She realises that her intellectual approach makes most people uncomfortable. 

Li does not express anger, nor does she engage in self-pity, or self-recrimination. Her effort here is to honour the memory of her sons as well as to respect the final choice they made, even if she is no closer to understanding why they chose the path they did. She refuses to use euphemisms for ‘death', she also eschews terms like “grieving” and “mourning” because to her they seem wholly inadequate. There will be no “phase" of intense grieving that will end one day; there is to be no moment of release. She writes that she lives in the “abyss” now and she knows this is where she will exist, in this moment, and the next, and the next one after that. But she must find a way to live in this abyss. Things in nature merely grow, as she says. The insoluble will remain insoluble. 

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time. It was not an easy read but I am glad I read it.