A man’s mourning resonates from Staten Island to Sri Lanka
A legal permanent resident from Sri Lanka who manages two Subway sandwich shops on Staten Island finds himself without a relative in the US, struggling to adjust to life with a newborn while mourning his wife, who died three weeks ago. Nina Bernstein in The New York Times:
It sounds like a throwback to another century: A healthy, middle-class woman sickens late in her pregnancy, gives birth and dies two and a half weeks later, leaving her young husband to care for their newborn son alone. Even the new father, Indika S. Arachchige, 34, grieving in their Staten Island home under balloons and streamers that exclaim, “It’s a Boy,” still cannot quite believe that so much everyday American happiness could be swept away so fast.
A pending autopsy may explain the death of his wife, Tai Ling Feng, 36, a Taiwan-born United States citizen who worked in a bank. But to the young widower and the multiethnic circle of friends who had cheered on the couple’s courtship as a uniquely New York love story, immigration law now seems to be compounding a New York tragedy.
