South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Scars stay for Atlanta victim’s sons
Asian American men struggle after mother was slain
DULUTH, Ga. — It was already 1 p.m. when Randy Park tumbled out of bed one miserable March day. It had been another long night of TV and video games to distract himself from the emptiness swirling through the town house where his mother had once cooked meals between her shifts at a spa. He padded down the hallway, past her vacant bedroom, and nudged his younger brother, Eric, awake.
It was past time to face another day on their own.
In the immediate aftermath of the deadly shootings in the Atlanta area, the faces of Randy and Eric Park, now 22 and 21, seemed to be everywhere, their winsome images linked to a GoFundMe page established after their mother, Hyun Jung Grant, was killed. They were overwhelmed by financial donations, care packages, reporters at their door, and so many calls that Eric’s cellphone froze.
But in the months since, on the cusp of adulthood, the Park brothers have been largely left to navigate the world by themselves.
Sorrow takes many shapes after a mass shooting. Those left behind in the Atlanta area include Mario Gonzalez, whose new wife, Delaina Ashley Yaun, was a customer at Young’s Asian Massage. They include the grandchildren of Suncha Kim, who immigrated from South Korea in 1980. And they include Randy and Eric Park, whose anguish is compounded by the knowledge that their single mother was killed doing a job she disliked, part of her life that they knew little about and that kept her away from home for many hours.
“She died working for us,” Randy Park said. “It’s just
unfair. She already didn’t have much of a life to begin with.”
The path forward for Grant’s sons is now murky. Will they return to college or to work? What will they do with the money — nearly $3 million in all — that poured in to support them? What will they make of the rest of their lives?
Before all that, though, they are simply trying to learn to sustain themselves through their grief.
The Park brothers live in a Korean enclave in suburban Atlanta. Until recently, Randy worked full-time at a bakery and cafe. Eric was struggling in remote courses at Georgia Gwinnett College. The pandemic and their mother’s death put an end, at least temporarily, to those pursuits.
Growing up, the brothers believed they knew how to get by on their own
because their mother was often at work. But the past few weeks have revealed all the ways in which Grant parented from afar: cleaning the house between shifts, cooking large meals that could last for days and calling every night from work to check in.
And without the guidance of their mother, who immigrated to the United States before her sons were born, their neighborhood can feel foreign. She was their connection not only to the community but also to their Korean heritage.
Truth be told, there was a lot about Grant that her sons did not know.
She had told them she was a teacher in South Korea before moving to Washington state, where she found work as a waitress. She married and divorced, but the Park brothers never had a relationship with their
father. Grant and the boys moved to Atlanta more than a decade ago to live among more Korean families.
Along with other Korean immigrants, she worked at Gold Spa in a stretch of strip malls in northeastern Atlanta. Giving massages was an exhausting job that required long hours. Sometimes she stayed overnight for days at a time. She aspired to something more — a better job, a home that she owned — and did not talk much about her work, preferring to tell some people she worked at a makeup counter. But she had bills to pay and was determined to put her boys through college.
Many nights Randy and Eric had found themselves home without her, awaiting her check-in call.
Gold Spa, where Grant worked, was one of three businesses where workers
and customers found themselves in the line of fire on March 16. She was among eight people killed. The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, told the authorities he had targeted the businesses because he wanted to remove sexual “temptation.” A prosecutor in Atlanta has said that Long targeted some of the victims because they were of Asian descent, and said she planned to seek the death penalty against him.
Slowly, the brothers are contemplating a future for themselves. Eric plans to return to college sometime next school year. Randy is considering finishing his last few semesters at Georgia State University or perhaps enrolling in a boot camp for computer science. They imagine a trip to South Korea to meet their mother’s family.
Among the most difficult parts of Grant’s absence for the Park brothers is the list of future trips and milestones they had hoped to spend together.
That reality sunk in on Eric’s 21st birthday, which would have also been his mother’s 52nd. For years, they had planned to share a drink when Eric was of age.
And so, on the morning of May 4, Randy and Eric tried their best to recreate the celebration their mother had in store. They purchased fruitcake from a nearby Korean bakery and searched for a bottle of Chamisul soju, a Korean distilled spirit.
They spilled the liquor around their mother’s grave as an offering and ate their cake from paper plates.
They stayed, in silence, for half an hour, unsure what to say to each other.
“Are you hungry?” Randy asked. Eric nodded yes, and they left.