A MATTER OF FACTS

On the loss of two sons.

- BY YIYUN LI

Everywhere in the house there are objects: their meanings reside in the memories connected to them; the memories limn the voids, which cannot be filled by the objects.

“There is no good way to say this"-when the police arrive, they inevitably preface the bad news with that sentence, as though their presence is not ominous enough. The first time I heard the line, I already knew what was about to be conveyed. Nevertheless, I paid attention to how the news was delivered: the detective insisted that I take a seat first. I sat down at the dinner table, and he moved another chair to an appropriate distance and sat down himself. No doubt he was following protocol, and yet the sentence-"there is no good way to say this"-struck me as both accurate and effective. It must be a sentence that, though nearly a cliché, is not often used in daily conversation.

The second time, having guessed the news about to be delivered, I did not give the sentence a moment's thought. I did not wait for the detective to ask me to sit down, either. I indicated a chair in the living room where my husband should sit and took the other chair. My heart 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. This time, the four policemen stood.

There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged before I go on. 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; Vincent near Princeton Junction, James near Princeton Station.

"How relaxing a vacation can it be if we have to. spend all our time pretending we're not Americans?"