Losing a son, their bridge to a foreign community
PARKLAND — Linda Zhang wandered into her son’s room and sat for a while. She visits there from time to time, after her husband has gone to work at the restaurant and their other kids have gone to school.
The Ferrari logo sheets were still on her son’s bed. The Nintendo video game controllers were in his closet. Decorative cutouts of an elephant and a butterfly were on the wall.
And then there were the many tributes, gifts and drawings that poured in after her son, Peter Wang, was shot multiple times and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. On this morning, Zhang pointed out a framed letter.
“Maybe the governor of Florida?” she said, peering at a page signed by Sen. Marco Rubio. There was also a portrait of Peter, which Zhang said might have been drawn by a famous artist, but she wasn’t quite sure.
“My English isn’t good,” she explained in Mandarin Chinese. “Peter was always my translator.”
More than six years ago, after 17 families lost loved ones in the Parkland massacre on Feb. 14, 2018, Zhang and her husband, Kong Feng Wang, are navigating the wilderness of grief in unusual isolation. Other Parkland parents spoke out about school safety and gun control, ran for school board seats, spearheaded lawsuits and set up foundations to honor their slain children. At group events, many found solace and a safe space to vent their frustrations.
Peter’s parents, who do not speak English fluently, struggled to keep up with those conversations, or to take the kind of action that might have given them an outlet for their grief. In court, a place of catharsis for some families, they relied on translators to speak for them and to give them a bare understanding of the proceedings.
“All I want is to be able to do something for Peter,” Wang said. “But how can we? We don’t speak the language. We don’t know the culture.”
Well-meaning friends and relatives have urged the couple to move on and focus on raising their two younger sons, Jason and Alex. But Zhang and Wang are not sure what moving on means. They have shrugged off suggestions from others that they see a therapist, a practice stigmatized in Chinese culture.
Wang has largely disappeared into his work and Zhang into her grief.
“You can see that they have so many things to express to the world but they can’t,” said Lin Chen, a cousin of Peter who has served as a translator in court for Wang and Zhang and works as a trauma psychotherapist. “There’s been a lot of accumulation of these negative emotions, and when that becomes so big, it can crush a person even more.”
The American dream
In August 2022, Zhang took the witness stand, choking back sobs as Chen read a statement in English on her behalf.
“My name is Linda,” Chen said, as her aunt sat trembling beside her in the courtroom. “I am Peter Wang’s mom. It is so difficult to write this letter because I don’t know how to use language to express the pain of losing my oldest son, Peter.”
A few months before, prosecutors notified the victims’ families that they had the option of reading an impact statement at the sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz, the gunman. Zhang had initially been unsure whether she would accept. Even in Chinese, talking openly about grief felt so unnatural.
But at the urging of her Chen and some of the other victims’ parents, Zhang agreed to prepare some words. Lying in bed one morning, Zhang told Chen, who sat beside her taking notes, what she wanted to say:
Peter was the perfect son. Everyone always told me how lucky I was to have him. Our house is now so quiet over the holidays.
Born in rural Fujian, a coastal province in southern China, Wang grew up speaking Mandarin and a local Fujianese dialect. He did not know any English, but at age 21, he decided to move to the United States to look for work anyway.
Like many young Fujianese seeking better opportunities, he paid a smuggler to take him to South America. Then, from Suriname, he and other young Chinese men made a treacherous journey by boat and foot across Central America. Three months after he left Fujian, he crossed into the United States. It was 1996.
“We were so young,” said Wang, now 47. “We didn’t know what it meant to be afraid.”
Wang quickly found work in the back of a Chinese restaurant in Cleveland. He stayed in the job for several years.
In Cleveland, he met Zhang, who also worked at the restaurant and had come to the United States by a similar route. Both Zhang, now 44, and Wang said they understood that learning English would broaden their lives, and had tried several times to study it. But they eventually gave up.
“It just never really sank in,” Zhang said. In 2015, Wang and Zhang opened a Japanese buffet restaurant in Pompano Beach, Florida, with Zhang’s siblings. Eventually, they saved up enough money to move from Miami to Coral Springs, and then to a gated community in Parkland.
Zhang and Wang became U.S. citizens. They embraced some American traditions, such as installing Christmas lights on their house.
But they lived in a Chinese-speaking world that seemed parallel to the one their neighbors inhabited. Wang and Zhang often hosted parties for their Chinese friends and family in their spacious home.
“Our house was the place to be,” Zhang recalled.
Family divide
In Chinese culture, the loss of a child is seen not only as a great calamity for a family, but as a potential sign of more misfortune to come. Out of superstition as well as grief, some choose to steer away from the tragedy rather than confront it head-on.
Not long after the shooting, Wang’s mother went around the house and took down photos of Peter.
Wang said he had tried to suppress his grief with a return to familiar habits. He puts in long shifts at the family restaurant, and many days he drops off his middle son, Jason, 17, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, where he is a senior.
He said he had thought about moving his family to China, where mass gun violence is almost nonexistent. But he and his family had already committed to building their lives in America.
They felt somewhat less isolated when they attended gatherings with the relatives of the other Parkland victims. But because of the language barrier, Zhang and Wang gradually lost touch with most of the other parents.
Zhang still has moments of levity and joy. But life in America eventually became all but unbearable.
Last year, Zhang moved with her youngest son, Alex, 11, back to Fujian, seeking comfort in a place that was familiar yet free of the reminders of Peter’s death.
Last fall, while Zhang was in Florida for a brief visit, she and Wang went to Peter’s grave. It was his 21st birthday. He should have been having his first legal drink and celebrating with a big cake, maybe with a girlfriend, Zhang thought.
Instead, Zhang and Wang were kneeling on the damp grass next to his grave. When they had finished sprucing up the plot, Zhang, Wang, Jason and several other relatives stood quietly around Peter’s grave for about a half-hour.
As everyone left, Zhang and Wang lingered. Wang tapped the grave marker.
“Goodbye, Peter,” he said. “We’ll see you again soon.”
That afternoon, the family gathered for a feast of barbecued lamb, crab legs and fresh oysters. Zhang glanced at the light rain still falling outside, unusual for November in Florida. It was a sign from Peter, she thought.
She and Wang knew that loneliness would engulf them again when the day was over. But for now, they were grateful to be with people who understood.