Vincent and James.

2017 – 16. Male. RIP.

2024 – 19. Male. RIP.

Brothers. Second generation Chinese immigrants in USA. Their mother, a writer who lost both of them to suicide.

Where Reasons End (2019) by Yiyun Li, after Vincent’s death.

I read this book when it was first published. An imagined conversation between her and her older son, Vincent who lived ‘feelingly’. Sixteen chapters, one for each year of his life. It has a witty and mischievous tone. Nicholai, a name he gave himself, chides his mother’s new embrace of cliches and adjectives. “If you’re protesting by becoming a bad writer, I would say it’s highly unnecessary,” he says. (“Dying is highly unnecessary too,” she shoots back.)

Things In Nature Merely Grow – Pulitzer Prize Finalist 2025, by Yiyun Li, a memoir. She wrote it within two months of her younger son, James’ death. I feel deeply for her and with her but I am not sure I want to read that book right now. A few lines from it sing true:

“I am in an abyss. If an abyss is where I shall be for the rest of my life, the abyss is my habitat.”

“My children were not my burden. My sadness is not my burden.”

“I am very realistic in that I would always acknowledge that I am limited as their mother. I was limited, and I am still limited as a mother, so I can only do my best.”

When people hold an expectation that her grief must have an end date, she retorts, “How lonely the dead would feel, if the living were to stand up from death’s shadow, clap their hands, dust their pants, and say to themselves and to the world, I am done with my grieving; from this point on its life as usual, business as usual.”

“This is a very sad fact of our lives, they took their own lives knowing we would accept and respect their decision.”

Could I accept and respect Saagar’s decision one hundred percent? I believe it was not his decision. It was his utter helplessness and desperation in the face of his illness, his unsuitable antidepressants, lack of medical care, his isolation, his inability to recommence his education, our inability to talk about it and so much more. He was driven to it. It was not by choice. Anyone who knew him, knows that. I do understand though.

I understand, my darling.

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/05/where-reasons-end-yiyun-li-review#

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/17/author-yiyun-li-on-the-suicide-of-both-her-sons

Every day a good day?

Posted by kidsaregifts20

After one year of near-perfect climatic conditions, when it rains non-stop for three whole days and nights, one starts to notice the changing inner weather-system.

Isn’t everything pristine as is? A day is a day. Clouds are nothing but clouds. Trees are simply trees. Nothing good or bad about them. They are what they are. When seen through a clean lens, things can be seen as they are. The smudges come from our judgements. It is one thing to notice how they make us feel and another to blame them for being there.

He shouldn’t have made that horrible remark.

The car was seriously misbehaving.

That fire-door nearly broke my arm.

What a noisy bunch!

Mango good. Jack-fruit bad.

Sun good. Rain bad.

Birth good. Death bad.

Untimely. Preventable. Tragic. Etc. Etc. Blah…blah…blah…

It is absolute. So is the mango, the rain, the love. Absolute.

One day I will die. I live, remembering that each moment that I am alive is a miracle. I am way beyond my preferences, opinions and thoughts. I am not them. They are not me. That every day is a good day, I am beginning to see.

Thirty-one.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

(Courtesy: astronomy.com)

“Longing is divine discontent, the unendurable present, finding a physical doorway to awe and discovery that frightens and emboldens, humiliates and beckons, makes us into pilgrim souls and sets us on a road that starts in the centre of the body and then leads out, like an uncaring invitation, like a comet’s tail, felt like both an unrelenting ache and a tidal pull at one and the same time, making us willing to give up our perfect house, our paid-for home and our accumulated belongings.

Longing is felt through the lens and ache of the body, magnifying and bringing the horizon close, as if the horizon were both a lifetime’s journey away and living deep inside at some unknown core – as if we were coming home into a beautifully familiar, condensed strangeness.”

An excerpt from an essay on Longing by David Whyte in his book ‘Consolations’.

I long for the warmth of that hand on my right shoulder, that lovely smile, those big brown eyes and that dimple on his chin.

Blessed is the day you were born. Bless you my darling, wherever you are.

The C-word.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

He was born in May. I was 28. A pleasant pregnancy. Normal birth. No fuss, just like him. The Army hospital sent us a bill for Rupees 16 afterwards.

I want to organise a party. I want to sing a song for him even though I know he’ll be embarrassed if I did that. I want to see that look on his face. I want to put together a playlist for the party. Plan a menu and draw up a list of guests. Find a venue and a theme.

Most of all, I want to see him. Wish him a happy birthday and a great year ahead. I want to kiss his forehead. I want to present him the book, “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. I think he will love it.

I want him to know I feel blessed to be remembering him, for all this love. I want to celebrate him and the day he was born.

Oh! The C-word. Can I?? Am I eligible?? Do I meet the inclusion criteria?

Yes. Celebrate.

I can. I want to. I will.

Notwithstanding the yearning, I celebrate the essence of him.

Despite the apparent separation, I celebrate the felt connection between us.

Though the approaching day intensifies the pain, it also pushes the roots of love deeper into the ground.

Despite everything, I cherish the little piece of eternity we shared.

“You were a wave in the ocean

For a sliver of time, an age ago

and the sand on that beach

Still awaits your return.

It remembers being soaked in you

for a few glorious moments.

It remembers who you were.

The quiet beach and the setting sun

Smile at the memory of your face,“

The older I grow, the lesser I know.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

A book with frayed edges sat tucked inside the pocket behind the driver’s seat. After an overnight train journey from Sakleshpur to Goa, we were going home in a taxi. No coffee yet. I was not quite switched on. Bleary eyed, I pulled the book out of the elasticated edge. It was Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Some poor tourist had mistakenly left it behind while traveling to the airport to fly back home.

Thoreau wrote this book while he lived in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, hundred and eighty years ago. He was testing the idea that divinity was present in nature and the human soul. He stripped his life down to the barest of essentials and secluded himself as much as he could, living off the land as much as possible. He wanted to find out just what in life is necessary and what is superfluous.

(Picture, courtesy Maria Popova )

Having chosen to live in a place where, for hundreds of miles very few people speak our language, with no cinema halls, restaurants, therapists or book shops, where the food is of one particular kind, but nature is abundant, that question has arisen for me too.

A few weeks back, a quote by Thoreau had whistled right into my heart:

“Life! who knows what it is, what it does?”

Such a beautiful sentiment. I had wished for more of his writings. After learning some more about him and his love of birds, streams, woodlands and meadows, I got busy with other things.

When I brought this question to CORe, it generated a rich discussion.

“What is our relationship with not knowing? What feelings does it provoke?”

Some excerpts from our conversations:

It is a real test of oneself, dropping how things should be and taking each day as it comes. It took me a long time to realise how much my mind was tied to certainty. In Africa, the relationship with death is very different. They have many ways to remember a loved one. They believe they’re still here and it gives them great joy.
Anxiety of the need to know at work. I have to change my mind set to curiosity. Some things we’re not meant to know, such as, where is he? It would spoil it. I must accept that I’m not meant to know.
When he went, I didn’t want to be here. Now I do. I have a life that I want to have. I have lots of godchildren who have promised to take care of me. I have a vision of him and his dad, which I hope will come through in my own death. Maybe when it’s my time they’ll be there, and their peace will be shattered.

Yes. The older I grow, the lesser I know. There is a freedom in that, to be with whatever is happening. It allows for the mystery of life to unfold as it will and it allows me to witness it without conditions, with an open heart. The smallest things. The book that I had wished for a month ago, appears right in front of me after I had forgotten all about it.

Life. Who knows what it is, what it does?