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The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons | The New Yorker

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The truth is that however I choose to express myself will not live up to the weight of these facts: Vincent died, and then James died.

“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…

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