Connie Shin

It was a cafeteria in downtown Baltimore right across the street from the courthouse.

I have vague memories of The Lunchbox.

I've seen a lot of photos.

There's this one photo of me and in it you can see that I'm running between the buffet stations.

And right off to the side you see my dad and he's wearing green sweatpants and he's grinning so big.

And you can tell from this one photograph that I, as a toddler, very comfortable and at ease in this space.

And you can tell from this one photograph that my dad was so proud of his place.

On November 6, 1991, just a month after I turned three, two of my dad's teenaged employees, along with two other people, robbed the lunchbox.

And in the process of the robbery, one of them killed my dad.

My dad's name was Myung Jin.

He chose to go by Mike when he immigrated to the States when he was 25.

And Mike was only 32 years old when he died.

After my dad died, nobody talked about him.

We never went to the graves.

We didn't celebrate birthdays.

We didn't note the passing of death anniversaries.

Because my family and our community acted as if he never existed, I didn't grow up having the words to describe his absence.

And it was weird growing up knowing that there was this big thing missing in my life, but not having any language for it.

I remember when I was a kid, my friends would eventually ask me, like, hey, where is your dad?

And I never knew what to say to them.