The Boy's Mother
As I process what happened yesterday at VPI, my first thoughts go to the victims and their families. I realize that one of the victims is the young Asian shooter himself.I find myself dwelling on his mother. Not only must she grieve for her dead son, but she must also come to terms with the fact that he took 32 other lives before taking his own.
Her life will be changed forever because of those few minutes of violence. She will inevitably blame herself for whatever went wrong in her son’s life. She will feel the suspicion, accusation, and pity in the eyes of neighbors and friends.
She will relive the good times in the life of her son. She will remember when he went away to college. She will try to make sense of whatever happened that led up to this tragedy. She will forever ask why?
She will want to turn the clock back and see a different outcome. Instead she will live with the history written by her son for the rest of her life.
posted by Barbara at 10:40 AM
6 Comments:
She will be overwhelmed by this...funny that we haven't heard anything about his family...not yet anyway. The ripple effect of this senseless act is far reaching. That's all we've heard about today on our news, I can only imagine it's totally consuming you down there. There was a Canadian Professor of French killed. Echoes of Columbine and the Montreal massacre.
I thought I heard that the shooter was a Chinese national, but I could be mistaken. (It could have been complicated to even notify his mother.) In any event, MOI is right. Something like this is so far reaching.
MOI -- I think Kristin has the key to why we haven't heard much about the family.
Kristin -- I hadn't heard anything other than the fact that he was Asian. In my mind I had wondered if he could be adopted, as we have good friends whose 2 adopted Korean children went to VPI (one actually there now). I wonder if this is a tricky issue for the US Govt considering the sometimes shaky relationship we have with China. Now I wonder even more about his mother. Does she know yet? How did she learn about it? Is her emotional reaction any different than it would be if she lived in Springfield, VA?
Initial reports speculated that he was a Chinese national but more recent news reports that he might have been 23-year-old South Korean national, Cho Seung-Hui. I cannot imagine his parents' reaction, worrying yesterday about their student son, the subsequent identification and notification. How utterly horrific.
Good post. It's easy to overlook the horror and anguish the shooter's parents must be feeling. If it's possible to measure these kinds of things, you'd have to think their agony is even worse than the parents of their son's victims. And, there is so much guilt they must be feeling too.
My heart goes out to his family, as well as to all of the victim's families.
How horrible to hope that you have raised a good, decent human being only to be faced with this reality.
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